Holy shit... I made a Single Blade character yesterday. After the tutorial, I took her to Canada and she had the most difficult time staying alive. Is Lightning Reflexes boned currently?
Melee is pretty boned right now. You have to invest more in defensive powers and passives, and spend all your advantages on said passives and powers. Mostly defeats the purpose of being melee.
I wouldn't go that far. I think it does help to have some kind of stun/interrupt type of move, otherwise you just take too much damage. Also, for Slag, single blade is kinda hard early one because you are both melee and have no aoe which makes things doubly hard.
On a completely different note, I just got the always chill advantage on frost breath, so that plus shatter is just OMGWTFBBQ damage on groups of 3 or more. For example on a group of 1 villian and 3 henchies, I can be pounding on the villian to build up energy, then do a frost breath, which creates an ice tomb on each enemy, then shatter which just kills all the henchies and takes the villian down half is health. Its pretty ridiculous.
Granted, Shockwave helped a fuckton, but at my level, EVERY GOD DAMNED FUCKING STUPID PIECE OF SHIT mob has a hold, flies, or has a power move (even as a henchman) that makes Shockwave worthless. Not to mention every fucking mob is ranged for some reason.
It's such bullshit that I have to reroll after getting to level 24...
What are the rest of your powers? I hardly think that just because shockwave is not working out for you where you are now, that its gonna useless forever or that you need to create a new character because of it.
chrono_traveller on
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
Righteous fists (MA energy builder)
Beatdown
Roomsweeper
Uppercut (because someone SWORE it was awesome, but it's not)
Mighty Leap
Shockwave
Defensive Combo
Defiance
TK Shield
I also use Swinging and keep it active for the dodge buff. There's no point in retconning since it will cost over 250g for full, so the best economic choice is reroll.
Holy shit... I made a Single Blade character yesterday. After the tutorial, I took her to Canada and she had the most difficult time staying alive. Is Lightning Reflexes boned currently?
My main is now a single blade user and I love him.
I made him STR/REC and gave him regenerate. I also picked up spark storm and bought the advantage that lets it be used as a toggle instead of a maintain. He now destroys everything in sight. I was regularly soloing missions 3+ levels including the lairs.
I think my problem is that I ran out of even level missions. Some asshat thinks I "did something wrong", but there just isn't enough content. The Gadroon would probably only be 80% as annoying if I were the same level as them.
Righteous fists (MA energy builder)
Beatdown
Roomsweeper
Uppercut (because someone SWORE it was awesome, but it's not)
Mighty Leap
Shockwave
Defensive Combo
Defiance
TK Shield
I also use Swinging and keep it active for the dodge buff. There's no point in retconning since it will cost over 250g for full, so the best economic choice is reroll.
Fucking gold farmers can't work fast enough...
What advantages did you use? I've found it pretty key to target one ability as your main damage dealer and get that up to rank 3. I have rank 3 beatdown, and I've found it pretty good for burning down single targets. I don't know how I'll handle fliers, I'm only just finishing Snake Gulch.
chrono_traveller on
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
Holy shit... I made a Single Blade character yesterday. After the tutorial, I took her to Canada and she had the most difficult time staying alive. Is Lightning Reflexes boned currently?
My main is now a single blade user and I love him.
I made him STR/REC and gave him regenerate. I also picked up spark storm and bought the advantage that lets it be used as a toggle instead of a maintain. He now destroys everything in sight. I was regularly soloing missions 3+ levels including the lairs.
I hate saying it (considering my main right now is a Supernatural/Might powerhouse), but that should be very telling if everyone needs regenerate just to live.
I think my problem is that I ran out of even level missions. Some asshat thinks I "did something wrong", but there just isn't enough content. The Gadroon would probably only be 80% as annoying if I were the same level as them.
Well, you could run around MC/Canada/Desert looking for people being threatened by mobs and save them.
You get an XP bonus for doing so (think about 500, not much, but more than those mobs were worth) and if you luck out, they will give you a patrol mission that is worth a lot more XP.
IMO, I belive is possible to be even level to the quests, but you have to do *everything*, every mission near or around your level starting at about 13-4, save every citizen you see, do every patrol mission that pops up (including the ones SOCRATES mails you when you are abroad that force you to go back to MC) and probably find as many perks as possible for the XP that they give you.
Pain in the ass, but to me it's a better alternative than straight-up grinding.
EDIT: unless your 100% against the idea, PvPing will give you XP as well, especially if you were a major contributer to a winning team.
Holy shit... I made a Single Blade character yesterday. After the tutorial, I took her to Canada and she had the most difficult time staying alive. Is Lightning Reflexes boned currently?
My main is now a single blade user and I love him.
I made him STR/REC and gave him regenerate. I also picked up spark storm and bought the advantage that lets it be used as a toggle instead of a maintain. He now destroys everything in sight. I was regularly soloing missions 3+ levels including the lairs.
I hate saying it (considering my main right now is a Supernatural/Might powerhouse), but that should be very telling if everyone needs regenerate just to live.
You don't. None of my characters have ever had it except one open beta char.
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited September 2009
Here is the deal with Lightning Reflexes:
I'll compare it to Invuln, because in theory they do opposite things.
Invuln gives you better protection versus small attacks, like that done by normal henchmen attacks. This is perhaps your greatest source of damage overall in the game. For the heavy attacks such as villain and higher shtick attacks, Invuln is not the optimal defense.
Lightning reflexes gives you better protection versus heavier attacks, like the aforementioned shtick attacks. It is not the optimal defense versus normal henchmen attacks.
Where things go pear shaped is with Block. Blocking with Invuln serves to help compensate where Invuln is weak, namely strong attacks.
Blocking with Reflexes helps compensate for where Reflexes is strong, namely Shtick attacks. Nothing really helps a Reflexes character against henchmen except good overall stats and some luck.
Ideally, you should tank a mission with an invuln character and tag out for a reflexes character against the big bad wolves who will huff and puff and blow your shit down.
And Regen characters? They are pretty good against everything. :P
Just_Bri_Thanks on
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Holy shit... I made a Single Blade character yesterday. After the tutorial, I took her to Canada and she had the most difficult time staying alive. Is Lightning Reflexes boned currently?
My main is now a single blade user and I love him.
I made him STR/REC and gave him regenerate. I also picked up spark storm and bought the advantage that lets it be used as a toggle instead of a maintain. He now destroys everything in sight. I was regularly soloing missions 3+ levels including the lairs.
I hate saying it (considering my main right now is a Supernatural/Might powerhouse), but that should be very telling if everyone needs regenerate just to live.
You don't. None of my characters have ever had it except one open beta char.
None of mine either. Hell, I went through the Gadroon content in Canada with only Bionic Shielding and Nanobot Swarm to keep me alive, and I did alright. (and hell, though she's mainly ranged, CyberJane's Main Single Target DPS attack is a melee power, Laser Sword)
On a completely different note, I just got the always chill advantage on frost breath, so that plus shatter is just OMGWTFBBQ damage on groups of 3 or more. For example on a group of 1 villian and 3 henchies, I can be pounding on the villian to build up energy, then do a frost breath, which creates an ice tomb on each enemy, then shatter which just kills all the henchies and takes the villian down half is health. Its pretty ridiculous.
Speaking of ridiculous and Ice:
So I (re)rolled my Ice character since I wanted to futz around with some different power choices and respec costs are still up the wazoo.
I picked up Ice Wall, Ice Form, and the Frozen Footsteps advantage that turns Ice Wall into a PBAoE power that follows you around.
Which doesn't seem too impressive on paper, but for some reason I'm hoping isn't one of those famous Cryptic mis-placed decimal points seems to have turned Ice Wall into (more of?) a nuke.
I plop into the middle of a cluster of +2 or +3 henchmen, or the standard henchman+villain pack, and once they're in range, hit the Ice Wall button. This sends out around 3-4 pulses of AoE damage that are roughly 250-350 points per pulse. This vaporizes henchmen and takes huge chunks out of anything else. I've had packs of henchmen fall over dead before the Ice Wall animation even finishes. Then whatever's left standing is in an Ice Cage, so I can just hit Shatter. If they're still alive, they're almost certainly Chilled, so then I can Ice Blast them, which with the extra damage to Chilled mobs advantage is pretty hefty damage, too.
And if the mobs are out of melee range? I can simply fly over to them and my icy death shroud follows.
Oh, and once Ice Wall activates, I can hit Block and it keeps on going.
The downside to this is because Ice Wall has a recharge timer on it, if I get any adds I'm in some trouble. I'm pondering picking up Regen, because I want to see how much added damage Ice Form is really giving me and if it's worth trading off the survivability of Regen.
I also haven't tested out this build in PvP, and I'm still in my late teens so I may start dying more often, but so far it's been mighty fun.
To what end? There's no other place to go from 1-6 at. Granted, the first 6ish levels play almost identically for every set so I wouldn't mind starting at 6 (although the perk OCD would prevent me), but you could use the same logic to skip the first crisis zones, etc.
Skipping the crisis zones is fine by me, right now I've been waiting for over an hour for Kay's alt to come out of the tutorial prison into an area where I can actually play with them.
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0
Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited September 2009
Unrelated note, I 'fixed' my frame rate problem. I am now getting mid to high 20s consistently. Of course, the game looks like I am playing it on my Wii because I turned everything off, but sacrifices must be made.
Just_Bri_Thanks on
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I think my problem is that I ran out of even level missions. Some asshat thinks I "did something wrong", but there just isn't enough content. The Gadroon would probably only be 80% as annoying if I were the same level as them.
Well, you could run around MC/Canada/Desert looking for people being threatened by mobs and save them.
You get an XP bonus for doing so (think about 500, not much, but more than those mobs were worth) and if you luck out, they will give you a patrol mission that is worth a lot more XP.
IMO, I belive is possible to be even level to the quests, but you have to do *everything*, every mission near or around your level starting at about 13-4, save every citizen you see, do every patrol mission that pops up (including the ones SOCRATES mails you when you are abroad that force you to go back to MC) and probably find as many perks as possible for the XP that they give you.
Pain in the ass, but to me it's a better alternative than straight-up grinding.
EDIT: unless your 100% against the idea, PvPing will give you XP as well, especially if you were a major contributer to a winning team.
Right now, I can't get any more SOCRATES missions. There was a bug with one, and I couldn't even get into the lair...
Holy shit... I made a Single Blade character yesterday. After the tutorial, I took her to Canada and she had the most difficult time staying alive. Is Lightning Reflexes boned currently?
My main is now a single blade user and I love him.
I made him STR/REC and gave him regenerate. I also picked up spark storm and bought the advantage that lets it be used as a toggle instead of a maintain. He now destroys everything in sight. I was regularly soloing missions 3+ levels including the lairs.
I hate saying it (considering my main right now is a Supernatural/Might powerhouse), but that should be very telling if everyone needs regenerate just to live.
You don't. None of my characters have ever had it except one open beta char.
None of mine either. Hell, I went through the Gadroon content in Canada with only Bionic Shielding and Nanobot Swarm to keep me alive, and I did alright. (and hell, though she's mainly ranged, CyberJane's Main Single Target DPS attack is a melee power, Laser Sword)
I just dinged 20, so I don't know if this is as valid, but yeah, my character doesn't have regen either (though it is the might passive, which is defensive) and I've not been having many problems at all.
chrono_traveller on
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
We talked about it in game Bri, but I'll chime in again for discussion (also I'm very bored as Websense managed to find my small guild forum but not this one).
Henchmen damage, while light and fast, is also the easiest to control with other means. They are most susceptible to alphas and the (generally weaker magnitude) aoe holds and other controls. Their damage is also sustained rather than burst, which makes it easy to compensate for with heals or judging cooldown use. It can also be greatly reduced just via tapping a lingering block. It should also be noted that you can get dodge chances higher than 100%, presumably reducing the penalty one takes against rapid attacks anyway.
I guess it comes down to my thinking that minions may put out a lot of fast / light damage, but their style of damage is less dangerous. Villains+ on the other hand have the means for truly dangerous spike. Particularly super villains and above -- block is no longer fully effective, they use moves that are big but not shtick (particularly the meleers who do charged melee moves that hurt a lot, but even the casters like Electric Eel will "power up").
But we'll see. My dodge tank test still needs 6 more advantage points just to get the base build going before considering active defense (11-14 more if you count the threat generation and shield ranks). WTB more low level advantages!
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I know this has been mentioned and I'm sure posted already, but dropping a link for those that haven't seen it and so I can go back to it in the future (I had a hell of a time finding it the second time)
I made the change this weekend and loving it so far on my might character. Making my energy builder a press to hold instead of a toggle helped quite a bit too.
My friends and I were having a major issue last night. We're all around lvl 26-27 and we got the two quests in the city that recommend 5 people and have you hunt down a certain villain.
Our party consists of an AoE/Gigabolt Electric user, A Claw/ice user w/ lightning reflexes, an ego/light healing character w/ ego storm, and my Munitions Sniper/Gatling gun character with PFF.
Note the lack of an actual tank and a pure healing character.
Spoilering the encounter to reduce the wall of text.
The "Tough" before their names should have been the first clue. We were all dead within 30 seconds. Ok no problem, we got a bit ahead of ourselves, we just need to take this a bit slower and more methodically.
For the most part this works and we slowly make our way through the instance, dying periodically but slowly working out a synergy with our characters.
We make it to the end where the boss is after roughly 1-2 hours. At this point none of us have an stars left but we have more of less figured out a strategy that works for dealing with all the mooks.
The boss absolutely decimates us. He is hitting so hard, even through our blocks that our ego/healer is just healer at this point. eventually we put together another strategy that works. Mainly me and the electric user stand in one place and fire volleys at him while the healer sits behind us healing us and the claw user throws random objects and gets in hits when he can.
This kind of works but by the time we figured this out we had somehow broken the encounter and the boss hid away never to reveal himself again.
This brings me to the point of my post. We needed a tank. So now I'm creating one.
My first though was to take Might and go with Defiance, but I wasn't sure if Defiance was overall better than invuln. Then I read the posts above and though perhaps lightning reflexes might be good, but our claw user had that and while it worked fairly well, often times the boss would hit us for a good 4k non crit. which unless we were blocking and at full health, would insta-gib us.
So now I'm stuck wondering whether it would be better to go might or power armor, and if i should focus on nothing but damage reduction with my items.
I find that for the most part the majority of the player base focuses on damage dealing classes, (and I don't blame them, I did the same thing) but I'm having difficulty finding comprehensive information on more support roles like Tanking, and Healing. Heck Even someone focusing in crowd control would have made the encounter last night much more manageable.
Don't get me wrong, it was still an absolute blast and despite frustrations at various points as we tried to figure things out, It is by far one of the most entertaining things I've done in the game so far. (right behind making my own villain and being periodically attacked by his minions)
Any suggestions?
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I'll compare it to Invuln, because in theory they do opposite things.
Invuln gives you better protection versus small attacks, like that done by normal henchmen attacks. This is perhaps your greatest source of damage overall in the game. For the heavy attacks such as villain and higher shtick attacks, Invuln is not the optimal defense.
Lightning reflexes gives you better protection versus heavier attacks, like the aforementioned shtick attacks. It is not the optimal defense versus normal henchmen attacks.
Where things go pear shaped is with Block. Blocking with Invuln serves to help compensate where Invuln is weak, namely strong attacks.
Blocking with Reflexes helps compensate for where Reflexes is strong, namely Shtick attacks. Nothing really helps a Reflexes character against henchmen except good overall stats and some luck.
Ideally, you should tank a mission with an invuln character and tag out for a reflexes character against the big bad wolves who will huff and puff and blow your shit down.
And Regen characters? They are pretty good against everything. :P
Lightning reflexes sucks because you're supposed to / have to / easily can block all big charge up attacks, so in reality it provides no benefit whatsoever. You're better off just ranking up a block to deal with charge up attacks than ranking up lightning reflexes. You're not supposed to block normal attacks, you're supposed to be DPS'ing during them. The only way LR could work is if you took virtually zero dmg from charge attacks and could DPS during them and then block during all "normal" types of damage.
My friends and I were having a major issue last night. We're all around lvl 26-27 and we got the two quests in the city that recommend 5 people and have you hunt down a certain villain.
Our party consists of an AoE/Gigabolt Electric user, A Claw/ice user w/ lightning reflexes, an ego/light healing character w/ ego storm, and my Munitions Sniper/Gatling gun character with PFF.
Note the lack of an actual tank and a pure healing character.
Spoilering the encounter to reduce the wall of text.
The "Tough" before their names should have been the first clue. We were all dead within 30 seconds. Ok no problem, we got a bit ahead of ourselves, we just need to take this a bit slower and more methodically.
For the most part this works and we slowly make our way through the instance, dying periodically but slowly working out a synergy with our characters.
We make it to the end where the boss is after roughly 1-2 hours. At this point none of us have an stars left but we have more of less figured out a strategy that works for dealing with all the mooks.
The boss absolutely decimates us. He is hitting so hard, even through our blocks that our ego/healer is just healer at this point. eventually we put together another strategy that works. Mainly me and the electric user stand in one place and fire volleys at him while the healer sits behind us healing us and the claw user throws random objects and gets in hits when he can.
This kind of works but by the time we figured this out we had somehow broken the encounter and the boss hid away never to reveal himself again.
This brings me to the point of my post. We needed a tank. So now I'm creating one.
My first though was to take Might and go with Defiance, but I wasn't sure if Defiance was overall better than invuln. Then I read the posts above and though perhaps lightning reflexes might be good, but our claw user had that and while it worked fairly well, often times the boss would hit us for a good 4k non crit. which unless we were blocking and at full health, would insta-gib us.
So now I'm stuck wondering whether it would be better to go might or power armor, and if i should focus on nothing but damage reduction with my items.
I find that for the most part the majority of the player base focuses on damage dealing classes, (and I don't blame them, I did the same thing) but I'm having difficulty finding comprehensive information on more support roles like Tanking, and Healing. Heck Even someone focusing in crowd control would have made the encounter last night much more manageable.
Don't get me wrong, it was still an absolute blast and despite frustrations at various points as we tried to figure things out, It is by far one of the most entertaining things I've done in the game so far. (right behind making my own villain and being periodically attacked by his minions)
Any suggestions?
If you want I can help you guys through this. I'll be on from 6:30-8pm CST. My advice is to not create any new chars based around tanking (or anything else specific) when powers are obviously still being changed on a daily to weekly basis. Just cope as best you can until things stabilize. Really, I mean it, don't make a new char right now just to grab a skill that's really good right now. They were/are obviously not finished with the balance portion of the game and still have a lot of work to do.
While I love telepathy, I wish there was more abilities in that tree.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited September 2009
So I just figured out last night that your damage always scales with your super stats, regardless of what those super stats are. You can be a Telepath and make your damage scale with STR/CON if you choose those are your super stats. Dunno why that never dawned on me, but that little revelation makes the whole stat system make more sense now.
Before investing in defiance, I would look into Defensive Combo. It builds threat and stacks defiance on you (however, I've been unable to test whether it is a complete replacement for the passive. Damn lack of dummies in the laser room).
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited September 2009
I don't think it's a complete replacement, I think the buff it gives is supposed to enhance Defiance. If you read the wording ,it mentions boosting "damage resistance effects" by 13%, not damage resistance. Subtle but important difference.
My friends and I were having a major issue last night. We're all around lvl 26-27 and we got the two quests in the city that recommend 5 people and have you hunt down a certain villain.
Our party consists of an AoE/Gigabolt Electric user, A Claw/ice user w/ lightning reflexes, an ego/light healing character w/ ego storm, and my Munitions Sniper/Gatling gun character with PFF.
Note the lack of an actual tank and a pure healing character.
Spoilering the encounter to reduce the wall of text.
The "Tough" before their names should have been the first clue. We were all dead within 30 seconds. Ok no problem, we got a bit ahead of ourselves, we just need to take this a bit slower and more methodically.
For the most part this works and we slowly make our way through the instance, dying periodically but slowly working out a synergy with our characters.
We make it to the end where the boss is after roughly 1-2 hours. At this point none of us have an stars left but we have more of less figured out a strategy that works for dealing with all the mooks.
The boss absolutely decimates us. He is hitting so hard, even through our blocks that our ego/healer is just healer at this point. eventually we put together another strategy that works. Mainly me and the electric user stand in one place and fire volleys at him while the healer sits behind us healing us and the claw user throws random objects and gets in hits when he can.
This kind of works but by the time we figured this out we had somehow broken the encounter and the boss hid away never to reveal himself again.
This brings me to the point of my post. We needed a tank. So now I'm creating one.
My first though was to take Might and go with Defiance, but I wasn't sure if Defiance was overall better than invuln. Then I read the posts above and though perhaps lightning reflexes might be good, but our claw user had that and while it worked fairly well, often times the boss would hit us for a good 4k non crit. which unless we were blocking and at full health, would insta-gib us.
So now I'm stuck wondering whether it would be better to go might or power armor, and if i should focus on nothing but damage reduction with my items.
I find that for the most part the majority of the player base focuses on damage dealing classes, (and I don't blame them, I did the same thing) but I'm having difficulty finding comprehensive information on more support roles like Tanking, and Healing. Heck Even someone focusing in crowd control would have made the encounter last night much more manageable.
Don't get me wrong, it was still an absolute blast and despite frustrations at various points as we tried to figure things out, It is by far one of the most entertaining things I've done in the game so far. (right behind making my own villain and being periodically attacked by his minions)
Any suggestions?
You could pick up Invul or Lightning Reflexes as your main defencive passive, then get Defensive Combo so you can stack up the defiant buffs on top of that.
You'll want Str/Con as superstats if you pick invul, Dex/Con if your going Lightning Reflexes.
There is also several Active Defencive powers (like Unbreakable, Field Surge, and Resurgence) that you could pick up to use when the bad guy's charging a power and your at less than full health. Some work better with thier passive counterpart, but all of them should provide some sort of bonus when used.
On top of that, I reccomend scouring the powers for advantages that give defencive bonuses, there are a couple, some in places you wouldn't really expect.
I accually have a Might tank I'm building with Invul as the Passive with Defensive Combo, but I'm kinda waiting for the free respec patch because I utter despise some of the choices I made early on... Then again I might as well level untill that happens...
I don't think it's a complete replacement, I think the buff it gives is supposed to enhance Defiance. If you read the wording ,it mentions boosting "damage resistance effects" by 13%, not damage resistance. Subtle but important difference.
Using it puts a defiance buff up on you, and taking it out into the world it definitely increases your resistance on its own. I just miss the precise damage output by the lasers. I'll have to dual someone on the platforms.
Side note for anyone who wants to test this: If you take the defiance passive and stack it up and then swap to a build that uses a different passive, do your defiance stacks drop?
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If you want I can help you guys through this. I'll be on from 6:30-8pm CST. My advice is to not create any new chars based around tanking (or anything else specific) when powers are obviously still being changed on a daily to weekly basis. Just cope as best you can until things stabilize. Really, I mean it, don't make a new char right now just to grab a skill that's really good right now. They were/are obviously not finished with the balance portion of the game and still have a lot of work to do.
Might take you up on that. I don't get home until around 7:30 PST though and Usually my friends come on around that time as well.
I still want to create my tank type character though, if only for the fact that I foresee a real need for them at the higher levels and I don't think too many people have made any.
Besides if they do another massive power change I'd hope they would give us another full retcon. (although I'd kinda like to see the first full retcon we're supposed to get )
Regarding Defiance. Even though defense combo builds up stacks of defiance wouldn't it be more effective if used in conjuction with the defiance ability itself?
Also isn't there a blocking power that builds up stacks as well? Has anyone tested how high the stacks can go?
Delphinidaes on
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If they give you a full recon then you don't need a new char, and if they don't give you a recon then the tank you made is going to be subpar because we obviously have no idea how the skills are going to change.
If they give you a full recon then you don't need a new char, and if they don't give you a recon then the tank you made is going to be subpar because we obviously have no idea how the skills are going to change.
You could say that about any of the builds for any role :P
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First off, let me say Thank You to Cryptic for allowing me, my wife and our good friend to cancel our Lifetime Subscriptions. In light of the "no refunds on subscription fees" that's not something you had to do, but we very much appreciate it.
Secondly, I'd like to run down the reasons why I lost my confidence in this game. I played in Closed Beta (on my wife's account), Open Beta, Head Start and for a week after Launch. Prior to Launch, I was really really gung-ho about the game (hence my own Lifetime and convincing my wife and best friend to also get Lifetimes). I still think that CO has the potential to someday BE a great game. But it's not there yet, and I'm not the sort of person who spends a few hundred dollars on hope.
I'm writing this post because I felt it might be helpful to the developers to understand some of the things that detract--strongly--from the gameplay. I gave my poor customer service rep a litany of woes and unless he was really Wally West, there was no way he entered all that into the "why" field
Faulty Aggro Mechanics - At first I thought maybe something about the Roles was messed up, hence why it was so difficult to hold groups of enemies and try to tank them (conversely, it's no problem at all to hold the attention of a single mob). The more I played, though--consistently in a team with my wife--the more I realized that the aggro mechanic was just plain broken. We could both approach a group, me first, and according to the character sheet I should have had at least 18% higher threat than her. She could do nothing, I could attack a mob. . .and everyone else in the spawn would go after her. For the sin of just standing there behind me. Adding PRE to my character didn't help much, changing roles did nothing. As we played I came to understand the aggro mechanic in this game is just WEIRD. Personally, I think it's just broken. Respondents to this post will assure everyone they can scream at that I am just a terribad tank, but Aggro is broken. I'm sure others will eventually discover this, but I'm not waiting around to hope.
UI Lag - I did not experience general lagginess and only occasionally had "rubber banding", but something I experienced every time I clicked a button or toggled a hotkey was incredibly bad UI Lag. Here's what I mean--I could hit Shockwave (Might, Maintained Power) and nothing would happen. I would wait a heartbeat or two, then release the button/key to try again, thinking "Oh, it didn't trigger." The Shockwave would then trigger for all of a second, getting one damage pulse out to my targets. This sort of thing was happening to my wife and friend, as well, and not only for Shockwave--every maintained power I tried suffered from this frequent not-fire. My wife joked that she could tell I was trying to trigger some of my powers when she started hearing rapid tapping or clicking from my keyboard/mouse. I forget the name of the power, but the Might defense-reducing ability comes immediately to mind. Sometimes? It just never fired . Having to fight the UI just to down some mobs was getting really REALLY tiresome.
Lack of Documentation - The total lack of documentation for this game makes my teeth hurt. Seriously, that pittance of a manual on the website? Copy/pasting the website EULA into the paper "manual"? I could almost live with this if I could easily look up information in the game. . .but instead I have to try and hunt down random NPCs and hope they have explanations of this, that and the other? When I cancelled, the customer service rep said that if I wanted a manual, I could go to hero games and buy the RP books. What? No really, WHAT? Not only does there appear to be a lack of documentation client-side, there's also apparently a lack of documentation developer-side. . .seriously, you change numbers on a spreadsheet, and that propagates changes throughout the game that the developers aren't aware of and can't thoroughly explain? I'm a software developer myself (business, not games), and. . .that's terrifying. Really really terrifying.
Healers Get Nothing - My wife and I tested this out (since she was playing Fire, and had a really good PRE, she also took the heal that scales with PRE) and discovered that healing counts for nothing. In Open Missions, if she heals me. . .she gets no credit for even being there. She gets XP if she heals through a fight, but she doesn't get replenishment on her stars. . .she only gets THAT if she fights. But if she wanted to heal, she should get credit for it. This is a bad show.
Surprising Lack of Nemesis Henchmen Customization - This is just a little nitpick on my part, but it serves to illustrate a point I'll get to later about a lack of polish. I can choose from certain pre-sets of henchmen for my nemesis. . .I don't get to design them myself. So my nazi-eque nemesis. . .has thugs, I guess? Or maybe robots? I deeply, deeply wish I could have also customized the look of my nemesis' henchmen. Or switched it up. . .have some types of henchmen who were robots, some who were thugs. But no, no luck there.
Teaming Not Supported In General - As we progressed, it became apparent that teaming while levelling wasn't really designed into this game from the start. Some of the quests allow everyone in a party to get credit for something. . .some of them, not so much. We even ran into a situation in a mine in Canada where there was an item on a table, and she was able to pick it up but I wasn't, because it disappeared after she took it. The item? It gave a quest, one that she couldn't share. This sort of thing, like the broken aggro mechanic and the lack of consideration for healers, demonstrates to my mind that the game was developed and tested for soloing. . .because if you're soloing, none of these flaws becomes apparent. If you're teaming, though, these flaws begin to glare.
The "Extended Play" Freak-Out - Looking at the patches around the Head Start weekend, it seems to me that the developers freaked out a little bit when 1) there were people who hit 40 over the weekend and 2) so many people were saying the game was really easy and decrying the lack of end-game content. The reaction to that appears to have been, on the part of Cryptic, "Let's make the game more difficult and globally reduce XP gain to slow things down." This of course led to a change in difficulty (that, to my mind, wasn't all that bad. . .I felt, if the mechanics of the game worked correctly, that the difficulty of the fights was about spot-on) and gaps in XP-earning that forced some tedious grinding. This really damaged my confidence in the development team, because it was so contrary to everything that had previously been said about the game--"easy, fun, no stress, no grinding, etc etc". I can respect and understand fine-tuning. . .and as a long-time MMO player, I understand that MMOs are changing all the time. . .but such a dramatic change right out of the gate leads me to think that this game needed a LOT more testing than it got, and was not ready to launch when it did.
We Are All of Us In the Shadow of Warcraft - Whether you want to admit it or not, every MMO exists in the shadow of WoW, an almost 5-year-old game that remains the frontrunner of all MMOs because of its polish and robustness. In 2009, I would expect any new MMO to feel like it is several steps ahead of where the genre has previously been; to feel like it has looked at all the flaws of all the games that have gone before, and found ways of resolving those issues; to feel like it has looked at all of what was "best" about all the games that have gone before, and found ways of including those. But CO just doesn't feel like it has that kind of polish. From all the issues I've described above, from the lack of GM tools (a delete command on the CO database is actually a DELETE command? No tool to offer respecs to subsets of players?) to the limited number of zones (5 zones and we just keep spreading out from the center?), my initial enthusiasm for CO has dulled for the lack of polish and shine. And while I could (almost) accept this from a company that has never developed an MMO before, Cryptic's already got an MMO under it's belt, as does Bill Roper. Excuses, to my mind, should not HAVE to be made for this, that and the other being broken. I thought, before launch, "things will be better once September 1 rolls around!" But, for me, I was wrong.
I think Cryptic has succeeded in making what could (eventually, once it works right) be a fast-paced, fun game with engaging, non-MMO-styled combat. I love the constant motion of combat. But overall, it suffers from the kind of launch woes I would have expected 5 years ago, but not today. And given that a lifetime subscription is only valuable if I would otherwise spend $200 or more on the game. . .I don't honestly believe that I will get that kind of value out of CO. By this weekend I was already bored, because the game for me was becoming increasingly less about beating up the bad guys and more about desperately hoping I could use my abilities TO fight the bad guys. That gets old REALLY fast.
Just_Bri_Thanks on
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Overwatch: TomFoolery#1388 Black Desert: Family Name: Foolery. Characters: Tome & Beerserk.
(Retired) GW2 Characters (Fort Aspenwood): Roy Gee Biv
(Retired) Let's Play: Lone Wolf
I still think all the problems with this game are temporary until they find all the unreported exploits testers refused to divulge in order to exploit during retail launch.
Posts
What are the rest of your powers? I hardly think that just because shockwave is not working out for you where you are now, that its gonna useless forever or that you need to create a new character because of it.
Beatdown
Roomsweeper
Uppercut (because someone SWORE it was awesome, but it's not)
Mighty Leap
Shockwave
Defensive Combo
Defiance
TK Shield
I also use Swinging and keep it active for the dodge buff. There's no point in retconning since it will cost over 250g for full, so the best economic choice is reroll.
Fucking gold farmers can't work fast enough...
The Raid
My main is now a single blade user and I love him.
I made him STR/REC and gave him regenerate. I also picked up spark storm and bought the advantage that lets it be used as a toggle instead of a maintain. He now destroys everything in sight. I was regularly soloing missions 3+ levels including the lairs.
The Raid
What advantages did you use? I've found it pretty key to target one ability as your main damage dealer and get that up to rank 3. I have rank 3 beatdown, and I've found it pretty good for burning down single targets. I don't know how I'll handle fliers, I'm only just finishing Snake Gulch.
I hate saying it (considering my main right now is a Supernatural/Might powerhouse), but that should be very telling if everyone needs regenerate just to live.
Well, you could run around MC/Canada/Desert looking for people being threatened by mobs and save them.
You get an XP bonus for doing so (think about 500, not much, but more than those mobs were worth) and if you luck out, they will give you a patrol mission that is worth a lot more XP.
IMO, I belive is possible to be even level to the quests, but you have to do *everything*, every mission near or around your level starting at about 13-4, save every citizen you see, do every patrol mission that pops up (including the ones SOCRATES mails you when you are abroad that force you to go back to MC) and probably find as many perks as possible for the XP that they give you.
Pain in the ass, but to me it's a better alternative than straight-up grinding.
EDIT: unless your 100% against the idea, PvPing will give you XP as well, especially if you were a major contributer to a winning team.
You don't. None of my characters have ever had it except one open beta char.
Black Desert: Family Name: Foolery. Characters: Tome & Beerserk.
(Retired) GW2 Characters (Fort Aspenwood): Roy Gee Biv
(Retired) Let's Play: Lone Wolf
I'll compare it to Invuln, because in theory they do opposite things.
Invuln gives you better protection versus small attacks, like that done by normal henchmen attacks. This is perhaps your greatest source of damage overall in the game. For the heavy attacks such as villain and higher shtick attacks, Invuln is not the optimal defense.
Lightning reflexes gives you better protection versus heavier attacks, like the aforementioned shtick attacks. It is not the optimal defense versus normal henchmen attacks.
Where things go pear shaped is with Block. Blocking with Invuln serves to help compensate where Invuln is weak, namely strong attacks.
Blocking with Reflexes helps compensate for where Reflexes is strong, namely Shtick attacks. Nothing really helps a Reflexes character against henchmen except good overall stats and some luck.
Ideally, you should tank a mission with an invuln character and tag out for a reflexes character against the big bad wolves who will huff and puff and blow your shit down.
And Regen characters? They are pretty good against everything. :P
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
None of mine either. Hell, I went through the Gadroon content in Canada with only Bionic Shielding and Nanobot Swarm to keep me alive, and I did alright. (and hell, though she's mainly ranged, CyberJane's Main Single Target DPS attack is a melee power, Laser Sword)
Speaking of ridiculous and Ice:
So I (re)rolled my Ice character since I wanted to futz around with some different power choices and respec costs are still up the wazoo.
I picked up Ice Wall, Ice Form, and the Frozen Footsteps advantage that turns Ice Wall into a PBAoE power that follows you around.
Which doesn't seem too impressive on paper, but for some reason I'm hoping isn't one of those famous Cryptic mis-placed decimal points seems to have turned Ice Wall into (more of?) a nuke.
I plop into the middle of a cluster of +2 or +3 henchmen, or the standard henchman+villain pack, and once they're in range, hit the Ice Wall button. This sends out around 3-4 pulses of AoE damage that are roughly 250-350 points per pulse. This vaporizes henchmen and takes huge chunks out of anything else. I've had packs of henchmen fall over dead before the Ice Wall animation even finishes. Then whatever's left standing is in an Ice Cage, so I can just hit Shatter. If they're still alive, they're almost certainly Chilled, so then I can Ice Blast them, which with the extra damage to Chilled mobs advantage is pretty hefty damage, too.
And if the mobs are out of melee range? I can simply fly over to them and my icy death shroud follows.
Oh, and once Ice Wall activates, I can hit Block and it keeps on going.
The downside to this is because Ice Wall has a recharge timer on it, if I get any adds I'm in some trouble. I'm pondering picking up Regen, because I want to see how much added damage Ice Form is really giving me and if it's worth trading off the survivability of Regen.
I also haven't tested out this build in PvP, and I'm still in my late teens so I may start dying more often, but so far it's been mighty fun.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Right now, I can't get any more SOCRATES missions. There was a bug with one, and I couldn't even get into the lair...
The Raid
I just dinged 20, so I don't know if this is as valid, but yeah, my character doesn't have regen either (though it is the might passive, which is defensive) and I've not been having many problems at all.
Henchmen damage, while light and fast, is also the easiest to control with other means. They are most susceptible to alphas and the (generally weaker magnitude) aoe holds and other controls. Their damage is also sustained rather than burst, which makes it easy to compensate for with heals or judging cooldown use. It can also be greatly reduced just via tapping a lingering block. It should also be noted that you can get dodge chances higher than 100%, presumably reducing the penalty one takes against rapid attacks anyway.
I guess it comes down to my thinking that minions may put out a lot of fast / light damage, but their style of damage is less dangerous. Villains+ on the other hand have the means for truly dangerous spike. Particularly super villains and above -- block is no longer fully effective, they use moves that are big but not shtick (particularly the meleers who do charged melee moves that hurt a lot, but even the casters like Electric Eel will "power up").
But we'll see. My dodge tank test still needs 6 more advantage points just to get the base build going before considering active defense (11-14 more if you count the threat generation and shield ranks). WTB more low level advantages!
Black Desert: Family Name: Foolery. Characters: Tome & Beerserk.
(Retired) GW2 Characters (Fort Aspenwood): Roy Gee Biv
(Retired) Let's Play: Lone Wolf
How to Champions Online - Action / FPS Targeting Tutorial HD
I made the change this weekend and loving it so far on my might character. Making my energy builder a press to hold instead of a toggle helped quite a bit too.
Our party consists of an AoE/Gigabolt Electric user, A Claw/ice user w/ lightning reflexes, an ego/light healing character w/ ego storm, and my Munitions Sniper/Gatling gun character with PFF.
Note the lack of an actual tank and a pure healing character.
Spoilering the encounter to reduce the wall of text.
For the most part this works and we slowly make our way through the instance, dying periodically but slowly working out a synergy with our characters.
We make it to the end where the boss is after roughly 1-2 hours. At this point none of us have an stars left but we have more of less figured out a strategy that works for dealing with all the mooks.
The boss absolutely decimates us. He is hitting so hard, even through our blocks that our ego/healer is just healer at this point. eventually we put together another strategy that works. Mainly me and the electric user stand in one place and fire volleys at him while the healer sits behind us healing us and the claw user throws random objects and gets in hits when he can.
This kind of works but by the time we figured this out we had somehow broken the encounter and the boss hid away never to reveal himself again.
This brings me to the point of my post. We needed a tank. So now I'm creating one.
My first though was to take Might and go with Defiance, but I wasn't sure if Defiance was overall better than invuln. Then I read the posts above and though perhaps lightning reflexes might be good, but our claw user had that and while it worked fairly well, often times the boss would hit us for a good 4k non crit. which unless we were blocking and at full health, would insta-gib us.
So now I'm stuck wondering whether it would be better to go might or power armor, and if i should focus on nothing but damage reduction with my items.
I find that for the most part the majority of the player base focuses on damage dealing classes, (and I don't blame them, I did the same thing) but I'm having difficulty finding comprehensive information on more support roles like Tanking, and Healing. Heck Even someone focusing in crowd control would have made the encounter last night much more manageable.
Don't get me wrong, it was still an absolute blast and despite frustrations at various points as we tried to figure things out, It is by far one of the most entertaining things I've done in the game so far. (right behind making my own villain and being periodically attacked by his minions)
Any suggestions?
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
Lightning reflexes sucks because you're supposed to / have to / easily can block all big charge up attacks, so in reality it provides no benefit whatsoever. You're better off just ranking up a block to deal with charge up attacks than ranking up lightning reflexes. You're not supposed to block normal attacks, you're supposed to be DPS'ing during them. The only way LR could work is if you took virtually zero dmg from charge attacks and could DPS during them and then block during all "normal" types of damage.
If you want I can help you guys through this. I'll be on from 6:30-8pm CST. My advice is to not create any new chars based around tanking (or anything else specific) when powers are obviously still being changed on a daily to weekly basis. Just cope as best you can until things stabilize. Really, I mean it, don't make a new char right now just to grab a skill that's really good right now. They were/are obviously not finished with the balance portion of the game and still have a lot of work to do.
Before investing in defiance, I would look into Defensive Combo. It builds threat and stacks defiance on you (however, I've been unable to test whether it is a complete replacement for the passive. Damn lack of dummies in the laser room).
Black Desert: Family Name: Foolery. Characters: Tome & Beerserk.
(Retired) GW2 Characters (Fort Aspenwood): Roy Gee Biv
(Retired) Let's Play: Lone Wolf
You could pick up Invul or Lightning Reflexes as your main defencive passive, then get Defensive Combo so you can stack up the defiant buffs on top of that.
You'll want Str/Con as superstats if you pick invul, Dex/Con if your going Lightning Reflexes.
There is also several Active Defencive powers (like Unbreakable, Field Surge, and Resurgence) that you could pick up to use when the bad guy's charging a power and your at less than full health. Some work better with thier passive counterpart, but all of them should provide some sort of bonus when used.
On top of that, I reccomend scouring the powers for advantages that give defencive bonuses, there are a couple, some in places you wouldn't really expect.
I accually have a Might tank I'm building with Invul as the Passive with Defensive Combo, but I'm kinda waiting for the free respec patch because I utter despise some of the choices I made early on... Then again I might as well level untill that happens...
Using it puts a defiance buff up on you, and taking it out into the world it definitely increases your resistance on its own. I just miss the precise damage output by the lasers. I'll have to dual someone on the platforms.
Side note for anyone who wants to test this: If you take the defiance passive and stack it up and then swap to a build that uses a different passive, do your defiance stacks drop?
Black Desert: Family Name: Foolery. Characters: Tome & Beerserk.
(Retired) GW2 Characters (Fort Aspenwood): Roy Gee Biv
(Retired) Let's Play: Lone Wolf
Might take you up on that. I don't get home until around 7:30 PST though and Usually my friends come on around that time as well.
I still want to create my tank type character though, if only for the fact that I foresee a real need for them at the higher levels and I don't think too many people have made any.
Besides if they do another massive power change I'd hope they would give us another full retcon. (although I'd kinda like to see the first full retcon we're supposed to get
Regarding Defiance. Even though defense combo builds up stacks of defiance wouldn't it be more effective if used in conjuction with the defiance ability itself?
Also isn't there a blocking power that builds up stacks as well? Has anyone tested how high the stacks can go?
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
You could say that about any of the builds for any role :P
Black Desert: Family Name: Foolery. Characters: Tome & Beerserk.
(Retired) GW2 Characters (Fort Aspenwood): Roy Gee Biv
(Retired) Let's Play: Lone Wolf
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
At least he worded it politely and was optimistic about the game being able to head in the proper direction.
Why did you post that here?
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Black Desert: Family Name: Foolery. Characters: Tome & Beerserk.
(Retired) GW2 Characters (Fort Aspenwood): Roy Gee Biv
(Retired) Let's Play: Lone Wolf
At least, I fucking hope so.
The Raid