LordOskuro wrote:I must say the PvP is a nightmare, though. It boggles the mind that a supposedly high damage build (might) can't scratch a caster that is blocking while her health regenerates, and then is perma-held into oblivion. But when not facing über-builds, it is fun.
Get a block-breaker (i.e., the crippling advantage). Or knock-up. There's plenty of ways to deal with pesky people in PvP.
The hold crap does need to be toned down, though. My main is Strength/Ego (the two hold-breaker stats) and I still sit there watching myself die if I get hit with a tazer arrow.
So far, one of my chief complaints is that I've discovered now that there's a limit to how much you can upgrade a power. I was mighty pissed when I went on my merry way to upgrade my Rank 3 Haymaker to have the anti-heal ability, only to discover that Haymaker couldn't have any more points spent in it 'cause I'd already spent 4 getting it to rank 3.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
I consider WoW to have 'action-ish gameplay, and a simplistic and straightforward inventory and crafting system' already, I see CO as an evolutionary step in terms of game design by disposing of the class system, but it's fundamentally the same gameplay.
Saw Grond in action last week, was pretty disappointed that I did Canada instead of the desert because the mutant storyline looked a bit more interesting than frozen zombie land (having just done Northrend thanks).
Darn, don't be so thick, it's as if you were complaining that Burnout Paradise is a clone of Need for Speed because you drive cars in both games (a.k.a. Fundamentally the same gameplay)
As for the Canada Crisis, did it today with an alt, and it sucks. The Desert Crisis has a better structure, as well as a more interesting storyline and ending.
I don't think I ever *complained* I just made an observation that you leaped on to contest. I don't hate CO I thought it was good but the badly timed downtime is making it impossible for me to play at the moment.
The storm of downtimes should be reduced to once a week hopefully very soon as they iron out all the issues they encountering post launch. CO's Dev's seem to have a pretty good turn around time(Roughly two weeks) between major bitch storms in the forums and patches to fix them. The current major bugs remain the mail loss(Hint don't send expensive things through the mail, randomly the mail system eats your items) and item customization(Custom swords seem to define 90% of the custom object loot tables atm) never mind the whole "Can't see your weapon when customizing.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
I've determined that the only thing really worthwhile in the Supernatural tree is Condemn. Every other power is done better by a different set, and Condemn is easy to fit in any other build being only a tier 2 power.
Regeneration is nice for soloing, pretty good for PvP, but not so great for tanking.
THe biggest problem is just that several of the powers are just so weak. The Aspect powers, in particular, may as well just be aesthetic choices for all the effect they have. Each does some AoE damage when you activate the toggle...but never again,and nobody with half a brain is going to activate an interruptible toggle when they're close enough to actually damage anything. The proc chance on the added effects is too low, it only affects powers from the Supernatural set that are otherwise still lackluster for the most part (Bite and Iron Lariat especially), and the effect when it does proc is basically worthless. An added DoT component to Condemn and a few other powers sounded great...until I cast a 400+ damage Condemn and got a DoT that did about 10-11 damage/tick with a very short duration. It sounds like a 10%damage increase except that the effect can't be stacked, and the proc chance itself is insanely low (the numbers I;ve seen suggest 10% default, 20% at Rank 2 and 30% at 3). The chance rises with rank increases, but the effects remain the same.
Rebirth requires that you die to use it. Nuff said.
Supernatural Power affects only Supernatural offensive abilities, and requires an Aspect to be running to work. And it doesn't provide much energy.
The Offensive slotted passive (Cloud of FLies) does very, very little damage and only affects enemies below 80% that you've recently attacked. Compared to the damage bonuses of all of the energy form powers, it's pathetic - I'd rather stay in Balanced and keep Regeneration running.
You can basically get every worthwhile power in the set by lvl13. I started dipping into Might for additional powers (Haymaker is great single-target damage, Mighty Leap is a godsend when you have a melee energy builder, and Supernatural has no native block enhancer so I picked up Energy Shield from the Power Armor set because of the advantage).
I'm massively impressed with Regeneration. Lots of people say it's overpowered in pvP, and I can agree...but mos to the passive defenses seem to be that way. I have Con/Rec superstatted, and in the protector role I was basically impossible to kill so long as I remembered to block. Once I get the Laser Knight advantage for Energy Shield (when you make a melee attack, Energy Shield is activated for a few seconds, meaning I get to block while attacking), I'll be massively overpowered. While blocking, I could be attacked by multiple players at once (I think at one point there were four of them) and still not die. I don't even have an active defense yet. For soloing, Regen has allowed me to breeze past group missions - my Electricity toon dies a LOT more often, even though he's taken Regen as well at this point (that extra Con from superstatting really helps).
My next project is going to be Darkness, I think. I played it in Beta, and it has some very good abilities of its own as well as excellent synergy with the Ego based sets. I should be able to make a decent Support/Offense caster. The only questions are what to superstat, and what passive defense I should take (if any - I just need something to prevent squishy death when soloing). Any advice?
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
Yesterday I ended up building a nice combo with my Shark. Essentially, I have the supernatural energy builder, the bite, and the gunkata. By using the bite, or the two-gun mojo, I can get enraged, wich means that my gunkata becomes a cone attack, then I tap the gunkata button slowly enough to land a few energy building hits in between shots, and I get the awesome combo of kickassitude.
Regeneration is nice (specially since I found out you can recolor it too), but the noise it makes gets on my nerves.
I simply love how flexible the character creation is, and how you can mix and match powers to get come crazy ideas going. Pity that the starter powers are locked in place and you need to respec to get rid of a secondary you might not like, but otherwise, it's nice.
I'm just wondering if I'll ever have a pure-spec character. Guess some high-end powers can only be reached through that.
Most sets I see will run out of power selections before 40, even if you take all the garbage.
I'd like to see the Custom frameworks at least be able to choose the second lvl1 power just like when you respec...but really, by the time you leave the tutorial, you'll definitely have the cash to take care of it.
My dilemma at the moment is my choice of superstats and defensive powers for a Darkness\TK DPS/Support/Healing build. Default for Darkness is End/Con, but I'd like to be able to fit in Ego for the TK powers or Pre for healing ability. End is almost a necessity as a caster - some of those abilities have a serious cost. Con would let me scale for Invul as a defensive power, which works well with healing (as opposed to Regen; resistance lets your healing scale much better with the incoming damage than a passive healing assist). I'm a bit torn. I'm likely to just go with End/Con, since the TK powers are intended to be secondary, with Invul as my defensive ability.
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
Invul runs off Str not CON, Con merely aids it. A STR user will get can get up to 40% Resistances ATM with a high enough STR. With a high Con that can hit 55-60 if you go all out with items. However just as a pure CON user if you don't don't STR boost you end up with 20%-30% resistances.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Mr Bean wrote:Invul runs off Str not CON, Con merely aids it. A STR user will get can get up to 40% Resistances ATM with a high enough STR. With a high Con that can hit 55-60 if you go all out with items. However just as a pure CON user if you don't don't STR boost you end up with 20%-30% resistances.
Blech. I suppose I could go End/Str. Doesn't much fit the character concept, though.
I could go End/Ego and grab Personal Force Field. It would fit the character concept perfectly...but PFF is just an extra stack of slowly regenerating extra HP that I can't heal on demand except with a cooldown, with no resistances.
I could go with Defiance, which scales completely with Con...but Defiance starts with nothing and scales up as the fight progresses. A few big hits up front and you're gone.
Any Darkness users able to provide advice?
Also, Bean: are you getting your numbers from the official forums, or is there a better site available for number crunching?
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
Rahvin wrote:
Blech. I suppose I could go End/Str. Doesn't much fit the character concept, though.
I could go End/Ego and grab Personal Force Field. It would fit the character concept perfectly...but PFF is just an extra stack of slowly regenerating extra HP that I can't heal on demand except with a cooldown, with no resistances.
Still provides a nice chunk of extra HP is great for burst damage
Rahvin wrote:
I could go with Defiance, which scales completely with Con...but Defiance starts with nothing and scales up as the fight progresses. A few big hits up front and you're gone.
To make Defiance work you fire off your big attack, then hold down your shield until you've taken a few hits then fight as normal.
Also, Bean: are you getting your numbers from the official forums, or is there a better site available for number crunching?
[/quote]
The min/maxer's are crunching the numbers as we speak and doing dozens of empirical tests but since things have been changed so much we are still at least a solid month away from the full formula the Dev's use. Funny enough we never found out about things like "soft-cap defense" and "resistance caps" in City of Hero's until after the Cryptic Team. Now in CoX you can bloody well click a power and find out exact what is increasing it's damage and by how much down to two decimal places.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Started on teh Darkness character, got it up to 12. Definitely some great stuff in that set.
Going to have to make my final decision regarding my second Super Stat next level. I'm still torn. My equilibrium is frustratingly low, meaning I need to open with an energy builder instead of an alpha strike. THat means more baddies hitting me, which means less surviveability. I can solve that by taking Recovery, but that virtually forces me into Regeneration for my defensive passive.
Some people on the official forums have mentioned not needing a defensive passive, relying on healing like Drain Life for survivability(some go as far as taking Presence for their other SUper Stat to scale up the healing effects). I'm not sure how effective that is. I'd certainly prefer to remain in SHadow Form all the time, but experience from my Electricity toon says that supervillains and even master villains might squish me (I can manage everything below that with Holds, I think).
I could take COnstitution as suggested for Darkness, which adds hitpoints for survivability, and suggests taking Defiance for a passive defense. Not terrible, though I like Defiance the least out of the passives - I'd basically have to sit and Block for several seconds to build up my defenses, then attack after I have a few stacks. It does encourage a very fast-paced gameplay style though - move to the next group before the 20-second Definace stack wears off, keep killing and self-healing. Sounds fun, I'm just not sure how effective Defiance is for a non-melee character (since I wont be taking Defensive Combo).
I could take Strength so that I can use Invul...but Strength does absolutely nothing else for me, so despite this being my preferred defensive passive, I don't think it's a good fit.
The last choice would be Ego for Personal Force Field. I anticipate that PFF will be changed in the future, since it's rather weak at the moment, but I don't think it'll be looked at for a while - the devs seem focused more on fixing brokenly-overpowered abilities rather than buffing weak ones. The problem with PFF (other than the fact that it's just an extra set of slowly-regenning HP with no resistances that I can't heal) is that I'd need Presence to speed up the regeneration of PFF HP, and that jsut doesn't work. Ego would help with the TK/Telepathy powers I was considering...but there aren't many of those, and I've been looking at other things as well to fill out my build.
It seems to me that my best choices are either Constitution/Defiance, or Recovery/Regeneration. I'm already using the latter on my Electricity character, and he blows things up pretty well, but Regen just doesn't fit nearly as well as resistance and additional hitpoints do for a character with decent self-healing abilities.
Does anybody have experience with a ranged character using Defiance? Should I just take Regen, enjoy my higher equilibrium, and try to rely on Holds and other control for survivability?
I've been so spoiled with WoW, knowing exactly how all of the stats work and what scales how, I'd forgotten how flying blind felt back when I played CoH.
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
I run Defiance, and I almost never use Defensive Combo. While I'm mostly melee, I have an odd assortment of ranged and support powers as well to fit my theme. Even with a 'themed' character and not a power-build, I can handle most fights just fine. The only thing that gets dicey (though I still usually win, if only barely) are above-level sets of 1 Villain + 4 Henches, or 2 Villains + 1 Hench. Lone Supervillains are cake.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
Looking over both the power description and numbers given on the forums, it looks like Invul scales it's flat damage reduction with Strength, and its percentage damage reduction with Constitution.
The flat damage reduction is handy when swarmed by henchmen or for maintained tick-based damage. The percentage is what keeps you alive with a supervillain starts knocking you around.
I'm going to use the laser in the powerhouse and test out different combination of Super Stats and passive defense abilities. It's definitely going to be End/Con or End/Ego at this point - I really don't want another Regen character, and they do better with Defensive Combo and Rec/Con Super Stats anyway.
Considering I'll be looking at Ego as well, I'll check out PFF. It was lackluster on my End/Rec Electricity build, but maybe the shield regen rate is high enough with high Ego.
I'll wager, though, that I'll be choosing either Invul or Defiance.
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
Looks like we get another free respec today, and a bunch of changes. Plenty more bugfixes.
Apparently, Invulnerability was scaling with superstats as well as STR/CON...making it vastly better than it was supposed to be.
Defensive Combo will now only refresh Defiance! stacks, and will apply a maximum of 2 of its own (with the advantage purchased). This means you can't use Def. Combo to double-up on passive defenses nearly as well. This is unfortunate for me - I was finding that combining Def. Combo and Regeneration with the Laser Knight advantage for Energy Shield meant I could solo damn near anything with trivial ease, and should have allowed me to tank moderate instances without a healer. With Invulnerability, I should have been able to easily reach the defense cap.
Of course, I suppose that was the point of the nerf.
I'm left again with decisions to make concerning my three characters. The Electricity one I think I'll leave alone - he's been doing more than fine. The Darkness/healer has been doing alright as well.
It's the tank I'm having issues with. Currently he's got a ton of melee and defensive abilities (primarily from Might and Supernatural). I'm feeling the lack of significant ranged abilities, though, as well as killing speed. I'm thinking about something like this:
Moloch: Level 40 Champion
Superstats:
Level 5: Super Constitution
Level 13: Super Recovery
Force Bolts as an energy builder with the Energy Refraction advantage will give me a ranged energy builder (currently I;ve been using Bestial Fury from Supernatural - melee energy builders seem to have severe drawbacks) as well as a chance to proc a small damage shield, which would be handy mitigation.
Shadow blast is a decent if not outstanding charged ranged attack, and I can add Crippling Challenge to break through Block in PvP and grab aggro in PvE.
Shadow Embrace is an incredible cone AoE, especially with Fatal Allure (chance to knock up/towards enemies). Challenging Strikes helps with aggro generation. This will be my primary Henchman killer.
Regen is for groups without healers and soloing.
Mighty Leap helps close to melee range. I don't necessarily need that one, but my highest-damage attacks are melee, melee activates Laser Knight, and Defensive Combo is melee. I need something to be able to close quickly when an enemy backs away, even if I can still gain energy from a distance.
Defensive Combo is self-explanatory - its a threat generator with a handy defense buff, even if it's been nerfed. It works wonderfully with Regeneration, helps Defiance build up resistance faster, and helps build up Defiant! for Enrage as well.
Haymaker is the boss killer. Right now at 24 just tapping Haymaker in balanced stance does about 250 damage, and I'm not even superstatted for Strength and I'm running defensive passives. Energy cosdt is reasonable, activation time is minimal. Charging it does tons of knockback for Villain control, and hits for around 1200 damage. A charged Haymaker followed by Mighty Leap to get back into melee range works very well (possibly with a Shadow Blast or some energy building in between).
Energy Shield with the Laser Knight advantage means that, as long as I'm throwing melee attacks,I have a nice defense buff running at all times. I'm not sure on the actual amount of resistance granted or damage reduced, however; I might change to a different block if the numbers eventually reveal that it's subpar, but it seems to have increased my survivability significantly.
Defiance, after the Invulnerability nerf, seems to make more sense for me. I'll test Invul tonight (I at least have Con as a superstat, so the resistance portion should scale decently for me; only the flat reduction should be piss-poor), but from what I've been hearing it just can't compete. Nobody has numbers yet, of course. I really, really wish we could see the number of stacks of a given buff we have applied currently.
Lifedrain is a great self-heal and single-target damage dealer. Drain Essence from Supernatural is similar, but for slightly higher damage it trades massively increased energy cost, a 12-second cooldown, and the requirement to be in melee range while your enemy can just run away. The Vampiric Sympathy advantage makes the heal component proc twice almost every tick on Feared targets - and Fear happens all the time with Shadow Embrace. It doesn't work with Undead or mechanicals, but otherwise a self-heal with great resistance works unbelievably well.
Demolish is just a damage resistance debuff with some damage tacked on. Not bad, but I'm open to better suggestions.
Enrage is a little late in the build, but everything else was more important. I'll be trying to grab Strength from gear, so hopefully it will provide a decent buff for me.
Thunderclap is a PBAoE minor hold with some damage. Filler, at this point.
Resurgence is a self-heal, and an active defense. I could replace Thunderclap with Unbreakable to give more defensive cooldowns.
Any comments? People still playing?
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
Yes, still playing, but I'm a character-concept alt-aholic, so won't be of much help to your powerset choices.
Oh, and fuck there being only 8 character slots, I've already run out and still have a ton of character concepts I'd like to try.
Regarding powersets, I'm having a bit of trouble deciding on how to set up my stats. So far I've been using talents to complement the main stats with secondary stats, but I'm not sure if that's a sound option. I know it depends on the build but, what is a good strategy when picking talents?
I use talents to help keep my superstats at around +30% damage (they cap at +32%), then use the rest for Con, End, and Recovery (if those aren't my superstats already, that is - I do have a End/Rec).
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
LordOskuro wrote:Yes, still playing, but I'm a character-concept alt-aholic, so won't be of much help to your powerset choices.
Well, what good are you then?
Oh, and fuck there being only 8 character slots, I've already run out and still have a ton of character concepts I'd like to try.
Agreed. That's probably one of my biggest complaints at the moment.
Regarding powersets, I'm having a bit of trouble deciding on how to set up my stats. So far I've been using talents to complement the main stats with secondary stats, but I'm not sure if that's a sound option. I know it depends on the build but, what is a good strategy when picking talents?
That's more than a sound option, it's a requirement. You get more stat points total for spreading the love across multiple stats for one. For another, the 32% cap is ridiculously easy to reach, meaning the only way to continue to scale is to invest in secondary/tertiary stats.
For example, on my tank, my superstats are CON/REC (I have Regen and I'm bouncing between Defiance and Invul for a second passive). I'm already between 30-32% on the damage contribution from both. At this point, I've been trying to invest in Presence (for increased threat, and because I'm thinking of sticking a heal in there - non-regen passives seem to require a self-heal, and the drains don't work with too many enemies to be reliable) and Strength (because some of my best attacks are melee). I'm also trying to get some END in there, because while my equilibrium is ridiculously high, my total energy pool is most definitely not.
Don't spread yourself too thin, but superstats are inflated well beyond what you typically need for the stat itself (for example, the STR cap for melee damage is easily achievable through gear with no superstat); you don't need to try to make other stats match your supers, but investment into the ones that affect you is often better than investment into superstats because of how quickly you reach that 32% cap.
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
Yes, I still play, but I don't know melee very well, so search me. You wierd hitting-things-with-fists types. As far as superstats, that 32% cap they put in sucks, I had to dump a good 120-ish Presence off my fire/healer build to stop wasting it.
Anybody toyed with a Sorcery character since they revamped Circles and (supposedly) fixed Skarn's Bane? I'm curious to see how it works now.
Chronological Incontinence: Time warps around the poster. The thread topic winks out of existence and reappears in 1d10 posts.
Out of Context Theatre, this week starring Darth Nostril.
-'If you really want to fuck with these idiots tell them that there is a vaccine for chemtrails.'
White Haven wrote:Yes, I still play, but I don't know melee very well, so search me. You wierd hitting-things-with-fists types. As far as superstats, that 32% cap they put in sucks, I had to dump a good 120-ish Presence off my fire/healer build to stop wasting it.
Anybody toyed with a Sorcery character since they revamped Circles and (supposedly) fixed Skarn's Bane? I'm curious to see how it works now.
The superstat cap is intended to be a temporary fix for balance until they can fully address the issue. Even so, I can see how spreading the stat love around a bit could make for a much stronger character overall.
Melee really only appeals to me for a tank, because of Defensive Combo. It generates extra threat and puts on a stack of Defiance - can't go wrong. And with that excuse, it's easy to put in Haymaker and do mad DPS - I can do more single-target damage with that on my tank in Balanced stance than some of my other characters in Offensive.
I changed up my build a bit, btw. Force Bolts, it turns out, suck balls. The shield from the advantage is only 148 damage, on a 10% proc. It pops up relatively frequently, but it's not significant enough to make much of a dent. Also, it turns out that melee energy builders give a lot more energy (like twice as much), which at least gives a reason for using them. I stuck with the Supernatural energy builder for character flavor and for the Bleed advantage.
At this point, major consideration is being given to Energy Shield with Laser Knight vs. Telekinetic Shield (TK shield lingers for about 3 seconds after blocking with basically full protection; Laser Knight is up all the time as long as I'm in melee, but reduces my damage and I can't easily get numbers on how much damage it reduces, because it's definitely not the full Block amount and there isn't anything to melee in the laser room in the Powerhouse). I'm betting TK Shield is due for a nerf, but even though it's powerful right now, it's not very conducive to tap Block every three seconds in a fight.
Oh...and Invul is godly against Maintained and other DoT effects. That flat reduction works per tick.
I did more Powerhouse testing for Invul vs. Defiant, and I'm still torn. Rank 3 Invul gives about 56% reduction in damage (ignoring the flat reduction), while Defiant with a full stack gives about 58%. This is post-nerf, but I still have CON as a superstat. The difference is so tiny, it seems like it basically comes down to always-on protection vs. the energy gain from Defiant. Since Recovery affects all energy-gain effects, I get a LOT of energy from Defiant...and I could use it with Enrage as a damage buff as well. With Invul I can still add a stack of Defiant with Defensive Combo for a hair more reduction, but one stack makes Enrage pretty useless (testing with one Enrage stack was pretty abysmal, making me wonder if it's worth grabbing at all anyway).
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
There are exactly four shields worth taking. Energy shield is only with it for Melee types and the Laser Knight Advantage. Force Shield with the Force Stealth advantage which means you are constantly gaining energy from enemy attacks(Highly useful for PA types), Telekinetic shield for lingering shielding, if you have your timing down you can be shielded 50% of the time and finally the Ice Shield as unlike the other energy related shields it very often applies Chill to enemies attacking you. If you are Ice based the Ice shield is pretty much wonderful as having Chill on enemies can as much as double the damage of some attacks.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Mr Bean wrote:There are exactly four shields worth taking. Energy shield is only with it for Melee types and the Laser Knight Advantage. Force Shield with the Force Stealth advantage which means you are constantly gaining energy from enemy attacks(Highly useful for PA types), Telekinetic shield for lingering shielding, if you have your timing down you can be shielded 50% of the time and finally the Ice Shield as unlike the other energy related shields it very often applies Chill to enemies attacking you. If you are Ice based the Ice shield is pretty much wonderful as having Chill on enemies can as much as double the damage of some attacks.
Really wish we had numbers for Laser Knight. None of my searching has come up with anything.
All of my DPS characters take Force Shield with Force Sheath. It has the full 250% resistance for all damage types (unlike Electric shield with has higher for energy but lower for physical), and the energy absorption lingers, so it's a godsend when soloing. No more energy trouble, ever.
"You were doing OK until you started to think."
-ICANT, creationist from evcforum.net
Rahvin wrote:
Really wish we had numbers for Laser Knight. None of my searching has come up with anything.
Your still counted as blocking while attacking. It's not 100% and the time is brief but I can tell when it kicks in because I go from 80-91-73 to 10-12-5 it's very noticeable.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Ok thoughts since we hit the one month mark today. I have a Single Blade/Fire character sitting at 37 1/2 to 38. One twenty, a quartet of teen's and a pair of still in the tutorial lowbies.
Champions is a good solid fun MMO game that is highly solo friendly. In fact to solo friendly as after level twenty unless you set yourself up to gimp yourself you should have a block power, a defensive passive and at least one decent attack to slog your way through till you get even more powers. And while at first I was thinking oh what powers should I get by the end I was glad of every power choice.
Take my 37(Missed my goal of hitting 40 in the first month but close enough since I'm already running mostly 40s content). With only one power left to pick I have
My energy builder(Reapers Touch) my default attack(Reapers Caresses) which is a nice low endurance repeatable melee click attack that has a three hit chain, third hit starts a bleed and "Enrages" me giving me a nice 20% damage boost for ten seconds along with hitting a fourth time free. Then Scything Blade which has a nice quick animation and applies a different much nastier bleed but does little damage on it's own. Then Dragon's Bite which is my charge attack, does a nice 800-1200 points of damage and refreshes both the bleeds by an extra eight seconds longer when it goes off. And my final main attack is Reapers Embrace which "ruptures" the bleeds for an extra burst of damage and does about 3/4 the damage Dragon's Bite does. Rupture in this case means they do 80% of the full DoT damage in one shot an ends the bleeds.
On top of my attack chain and my block and defensive passive. I have two actives, one a damage shield that breaks roots and holds and refreshes itself until I attack, the other a massive self heal that does the same but in one go. While Unbreakable is active I have 2k worth of shield that refresh once a second until I attack and keeps breaking roots and holds until I attack or Resurgence which is just a classic self heal/root break.
So we are at nine powers there by level 23. On top of that I have five extra "utility" powers I find useful from time to time. Like Chained Kunai which pulls an enemy towards them, taunts then and debuffs their damage. Or Pyre which lets me set anywhere on fire in a nice big bonfire I can stand in safely and target myself, enemies, or anything else I want to burn and yes that fire adds another DoT(A fifteen second DoT which refreshes itself until you get out of the fire) or Toxic Nanites which is another very high damage DoT which is on a delay(Once every four enemies or so) with all four on them does massive damage to most foes that last that long... what with bleeding, being on fire and poisoned. And yes I can use Chained Kunai to drag them back into the flames as well. Same thing with the Summon Animals(Wolves on Land or Sharks under-water) which is useful because as the wolves attack they heal me, oh and the enemy nearly always attacks them before me.
So yeah powers... and the game... it's a fun game. Not enough content for an MMO. If you still thinking of trying it, try it, play it for a month or two, come back in a year when it should be much more content filled. I see moon mission on the horizon. As each zone is self contained they have talked about some truly nutty ideas. Right now they have Millennium city IE New Chicago. And the frozen North(Blame Canada!), the old white sands nuclear hell-hole desert plus Monster Island(Now featuring Giant Apes fighting Robotic Dinosaurs and real ones too) or Lemuria which is a fully 3rd space under-water zone which is not as exploited as it could be.
Under development are a American McGee Alice style "Fae" world, the aforementioned "Moon" a second Gothic European style city in a world were Superheroes are common place and demons real. As well Flashy Neon super-crowded Tokyo at night style city(And how could they not if they did such a city not have common monster attacks) the Champions Source material maps all of these places in detail so they don't even have to be that creative to make widely different settings.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
