1601

Yeah–due to the no-archetype thing, in some cases, you’re well served by choosing the “custom” framework option at chargen even if you intend to take a specific framework’s initial energy builder and basic attack, because then you can pick a different starting stat block. If you’re intending to concentrate on a couple stats different than what the default framework assumes, for instance.

1602

Which is the best “active defense” for different stats? I currently have a self-heal that’s better than nothing, I guess, but I’m guessing I have the wrong stats for it – it recovers around 40 of health, or so, which can be very useful, but isn’t all that great.

Of course the power description doesn’t document what stats if any it uses… Anyhow, I don’t use a passive defense because I need the electrical form bonus, so active defenses are good for bosses or unexpected adds.

I also have the arcane circle that adds defense for those cases where the boss is just standing there across the room pretending he can’t see me, but it can’t be used in most random fights.

1603

I’m curious, does your first innate trait (during character creation) have any other effects other than setting your starting stats? Or are there secondary effects (like the damage scaling of the supercharacteristics)? During beta, the custom frameworks had different stat selections which I was a little disappointed to see disappear.

1604

Well crap, they silently nerfed Condemn in the latest patch - the hold chance has gone from virtually guaranteed to less than 50%. I’m hoping it’s just a bug.

1605

Unsurprising. Condemn was pretty guaranteed lockdown when you got enemies clumped, and thus went against the 1 hero vs 4 henchmen==challenging fight vision. If I were a betting fellow, I’d put wagers mostly on quiet nerfs to many of the AOE offensive and control powers in coming weeks.

1606

condemn is an aoe attack not a control skill, so they nerfed.

1607

Mordrak: nope, i don’t believe so. I remember hearing something about them removing almost all of the starting stat sets except the ones “tailored” for the predefined power set starting archetypes. something to do with too many to display causing a bug or something i think i heard.

Arctangent: that isn’t a bug, it is a nerf. They were talking about it on the public test realm for a while and it was on the test realm patch notes too if i remember right so 100% sure it is a nerf. The ability was kind of overpowered too.

Now i need to decide what passive to take on my tk. i’ll probably go dex/ego since without dex ego kind of stinks. Which pretty much leaves me with Lightning reflexes or ego form without much con (and even with con it was never really great defensively even before the nerf). Maybe i could go LR & laser knight to be able to take some hits. or even Ego form & laser knight. From what i remember, TK skills were bugged so they didn’t count towards getting other tk skills earlier (i.e. i couldn’t get ego blade breach at 14 even getting all tk skills) so ego form doesn’t really have that advantage unless they fixed it.

1608

Uh huh.

Condemn was/is seriously overpowered, though.

1609

hmm i wonder whether the much greater energy generation from force block is still worth it for power armor with invuln. Seems like it might be since PA is an energy sucker.

Nice, the game won’t even let you start up now unless you update your video card drivers even though i was having no problems with the game before.

1610

Not compared to Taser Arrow, the skill currently (along with ice breath for guaranteed chill) wrecking PVP. They’re really going to struggle to deal with all the various forms of spammable holds in PVP. As it is now, you can keep someone held forever, regardless of whatever hold resistance gear they’ve got, while doing decent damage to them as well, and all it takes is Taser Arrow. 30+ PVP is ridiculous - unless you’re a FOTM build, you can expect to turn up, get chain held, and die. Not much fun, honestly.

1611

So now when I start it tells me my drivers are out of date even though they aren’t. I downloaded the latest drivers, installed, and reboot and it still gave me that message. I guess once a month I have to tell it to leave me alone now (that’s the postpone time). Heh.

Anyway, I thought I’d feature someone else’s costume. I’ve been taking screenshots of interesting costumes and this tiny tiny wrestler made me chuckle (though he/she said it was an oversized gnome). It’s a nice change of pace from all the flash and iron man clones heh. I saw a pretty good Duke clone today though.

Two things I hope they implement soon, the recent costume change animations that were added to CoX and a similar aura costume part with similar choices to CoX.

1612

I get the same driver error message even after updating too.

Wow that costume… It is still outdone by the hilarious aion character posts though.

Hard imagine a duke clone without him smoking a cigar, but i suppose that was only in the teaser for duke nukem forever.

1613

1614

on noooooo,
it’s a goat rape demon…

1615

Okay, turns out the technology is almost in place, and you can get the free respec in the powerhouse. You need to have the retcon window open so you can admire the hilarious pricing, then type: /Character_UseFreeRespec

That represents you giving a final heave to the technology to move it into place, wipe out all your picks for free, and allow you to rebuild.

1616

Good thing daeke took the time to screenshot the flashy new respec button, eh?

1617

[Edit: Too Long, Didn’t Read version]
Tempest Arrow is good, but not as brutal as I expected before I tried dishing it out rather than just receiving it.

On the other hand, I expected Single Blade to entirely suck, but did fantastic with it – If you see a guy with one sword spin in place and slice you, even just once? Realize that at any given moment while you’re going toe to toe, 30% more of your HP are already gone.
[/Edit]

I’d been thinking Tazer Arrow was brutally overpowered, and so I broke down and went for a “Flavor of the Month” hero to see if it was really as bad as I was sure it was. I took the Archery energy Builder, Sonic Arrow, Tazer Arrow, and of course the ridiculous Teleport and Regeneration combo; I took Super Dex, Tazer Arrow rank 2, and the AoE upgrade for Sonic Arrow.

It helped that I had an Archery hero in mind from when I played Marvel Super Heroes long ago, so I didn’t feel entirely dirty. Plus there’s a retcon coming, so I can switch out Teleport for Swinging later.

And so, Black Adder!

I only played him through the level 10 PvP, and while he was good, he wasn’t as bad as I expected. In particular I had real trouble against anyone with knockback bouncing me out of my charge, and primarily I did good on the strength of Teleport’s brokenness. I wasn’t able to reliably chain Tazer Arrows, but perhaps because I had only ranked Tazer Arrow to 2…

The funny thing is that, as a bit of penance, I also took the opposite path and tried a melee Hero, which everyone seems to always complain about sucking – and I did much better! I absolutely cleaned house, and without Teleport to fall back on.

The Mighty Ifrit!

I took the Single Blade energy builder (“You need to have a ranged energy builder!”), Scything Blade (“Single Blade sucks!”), Thunder Bolt Lunge (“It’s useless now!”), Fire Flight (“Too Slow!”), and Regeneration (“Nerfed!”). I upgraded Scything Blade with the bleed that scales with foe’s HP, and Thunder Bolt Lunge with Travel Power canceling. Super Stat was DEX.

I spent some time chasing people fruitlessly at first, before I wised up and built up some speed before ambushing. After that, I had no trouble getting into range, and laying down the brutal Scything Blade for 30% DoT – 30% of your foes HP! I rarely ran out of energy even when flying, due to cheap powers and the quick fill rate of melee energy builders. Thunderbolt Lunge proved excellent at knocking flying players from the sky for extra damage, stopping would be Teleport + Regenerators long enough to sentence them to bleed to death in astral space, and crucially in making it hard for foes to follow me when I had to run and recover.

My success was largely due to the sneaky Scything Blade, as its bleed damage bypasses blocking, keeps ticking if they teleport away, and makes foes think their health bar is 30% fuller than it really is. That, and Thunderbolt Lunge, without which I would have died much more often, especially as Fire Flight advertises your “I can’t Teleport!” status, and foes at first attempted to concentrate on me; it also let me corner and finish off a number of foes looking to Teleport away.

1618

Nice! Is that Shadow Form?

I especially like the Pink Eye. ;-)

1619

that’s because you are playing archery build wrong.

You don’t go for Arrow builder, people go for other range, like I went ice energy builder for the chill effect, you also need gamestop boot to hoover off the ground which mean melee now can’t get to you at all.

Sonic arrow is great for PVE, it’s one the best energy->damage skills, it’s decent for pvp but with the huge charge time it’s a waste.

the OP build is Taser arrow + icewall(advantage with the icewalk), you do 30% with 1 strike with your melee, he kills you in 1 icewall, you start off with taser arrow, run up, icewall, another taser arrow, which basically wins you the fight.

regeneration isn’t OP for PVP, lightning reflex is much better than regeneration, most of the PVP is about alpha strike, regeneration will not keep you alive when a dual ends in 10 seconds, ice burst becomes extremely powerful later on, AA with ice prison, so your primary target is frozen in place while everyone else take a whoop 1400 damage on a crit and then falls for another 1000.

Late games, you take Retaliation as your block move, and after you icewall, just sit there and block, if anyone attacks you, then whomever getting hit by icewall takes 40% more damage, this combo is especially powerful vs melee, if they attack you while your icewall and block is up, they be dead within 4-5 seconds, while you will barely take any damage because block and dodge stacks.

1620

Why does ego form look like crap and that form look really nice…