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MTeague

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Posts posted by MTeague

  1. On 6/19/2021 at 1:36 PM, Darmian said:

    RE Scott's mental health. My personal head canon - yes, I know it's not said - is that whatever the reasons for his delusion, whether actually genuine issues or ones imposed upon him, some of the other higher level Resistance leaders already know about it but never mention it. Why?  Because they need him to be that way, driven by rage and fury at what has been done to him. Vetrano is quite capable of this. After all she was trained by Sinclair and is, don't forget, effectively Ghost Widow. She will do what needs to be done to win and if that means keeping Scott in the dark then so be it.  

     

    (The end reveal was still badly written though!)

     

    Largely agreed. 

    I have to assume Vanessa DeVore would have been capable of helping him.... if she could get him to trust her enough to really let her inside his head..... which he was probably too paranoid to EVER agree to. So I think DeVore and Vetrano made the pragmatic decision to use him as he is.  Scott and Cole aren't the only ones to write people off as "acceptable losses" or "regrettable but necessary", and there's some symmetry in the idea that his own lieutenants might have seen him that way. 

    • Like 2
  2. Sappers are very much one-trick-ponies. Drain you dry and detoggle you. 

     

    Regen will do pretty well against them because of the amount of passive regen you have going on, particularly if you're IO'd out. They basically won't be able to kill you alone.  That said, even as a one-trick-pony?  It's a pretty GOOD trick while they have a squad of their buddies handy.  Backed up by a bunch of Tactical Operatives who Taze you, and Gunslingers who hold you with Ice Bullets, they'll do the Dominator thing and just chain CC you holding you helpless as they wear you down.

     

    But yea. Electric Armor, Energy Aura, Fiery Aura (don't forget Consume! So many forget Consume!), will all wreck sappers day's.

    Regen and Willpower can also do nicely because Quick Recovery will give you a chance to come back and get just enough blue to act that much sooner. 

  3. 56 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

     

    Um, it's already in the game. This is a copy of Blaster Energy Manipulation Energize, minus the Heal but with KB protection and +ToHit.

    Yea, sorry, maybe you didn't realize there are already blasters with perma Stun protection?

     

    Well. Apparently not. I haven't used Energy Manip in... a long time. (obi wan voice) a long time. 

    Not sure I agree with that design either, but.... presumably that was during live?  So if the ship has long since sailed.... OK.  Objection withdrawn. 

    • Like 1
  4. On 6/19/2021 at 4:54 AM, Wavicle said:

    Level 20. Active Offense
    (Self +ToHit, +Regen, -Endurance Costs, Res Stun/Knockback)

     

    Raises your battlefield awareness and resilience.
    Recharges in 120 seconds. Lasts 60 seconds.
    Gives you 10% ToHit, 225% Regen (half enhanceable), 119% Endurance Discount, 8.3 points of Disorient protection, and 9 points of Knockback protection.

    Highlight is mine.

    Not a fan of providing any kind of Status Protection to Blasters under any circumstances. A break free on a sufficient cooldown, like /Martial Kombat's "Inner Will" I can see. But this looks like perma-able Stun Protection for a blaster. I can't get behind that.

    • Confused 1
  5. /agree with @Razor Cure. I don't think a single one of my characters uses less than seven powers from their primary tree. 

    Not ONE of them.

    So, 3 pets, 2 buffs, 1 utility?  Par for the course. I don't see this as a problem. 

    I mean, when you choose the class, it's pretty up front and unavoidable.

     

    image.png.3140c4818a9637070456a36f28721e58.png

     

    Sure, you CAN build a petless MM. Just like you CAN build a tank who doesn't take their status protection power, or like you CAN build a blaster who uses only Brawl, Jump Kick, Boxing, and Air Superiority to attack with. It doesn't mean it's a good idea. I mean, knock yourself out for whatever you choose to for character concept.  But if you're trying to ignore one of the fundamental principles of the AT, you do so at your own peril. 

     

    I mean if you want your primary damage to come direct attacks plus providing decent support, there's the corruptor or defender. 

    Choosing the King of the Pet Classes and then not wanting to use pets... I just don't get it.

     

    Maybe at some point the HC devs will choose to adjust MM's the way you want, and provide X buffs to you based on the number of pet powers you have that you DON'T summon? Maybe that would be a way to handle T1 pets being whomped dead fast at max level content. I haven't seen any indication that's the direction they want to go in. If anything, then recent changes have been about letting you get your pets back into the fray sooner vs later.   

    • Like 1
  6.  

    3 hours ago, Hexquisite said:

    All this thread is accomplishing is making me want to make another Sentinel.

     

    I see I'm not the only one who sees an alt combo that gets ragged upon, and decides to make a GOTM (Garbage of the Month) alt, just to show that yep, you can make this work just fine.

    • Thanks 2
  7. 1 hour ago, Crysis said:


    I have to question why you think the undertuning was “intentional?”  I can understand conservative modeling due to the whole fear of creating a tank mage.  But why would any dev intentionally neuter the AT to the degree it has been?  Perhaps accidentally….sure.  But intentionally?

     

    Is it though?  That question may circle back to the whole "Are things balanced around tricked out IO builds, or around SO usage?".

     

    If balanced around SO's, then I think a case can be made that Sentinels are in a very nice niche. Quite durable, constant status protection, modest range and ability to hoverblast, etc.  Not even close to the damage output of a blaster, true, but, IF ONLY CONSIDERING SO's, that blaster is going to eat pavement a LOT. The Sent? Won't.

     

    My personal sense is that it's probably time to balance things around IO builds, but, that is far from a universal opinion, and I do not know if the Dev's share it.  (or for that matter, if they agree with my impressions of the relative strengths at SO usage.)

    • Like 4
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  8. Definitely times i wonder if I'm even playing the same game as other people. 

    I pop Rage on cooldown on my Invuln/SS and have never had a problem with the crashes. 

    I don't find myself running out of end. I don't find myself freaked when my damage bonuses numbers drop to deep negatives for a very short window of time. 

    I haven't suddenly felt extremely squishy on him when it fades. 

     

    I'm also not doing non-stop farming. Perhaps that matters?  I tend to do just regular story arcs at like +2/x5 on him. 

  9. 5 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

    Secondly, and utterly unforgivable, is the way that Calvin Scott is treated by the writers. The players spend 20 levels getting to believe they are working for some great plan, then exploring Primal earth for 30 and then suddenly, totally out of the blue, during an incarnate arc, Calvin Scott is revealed to be insane, deluded, believing he was married to Mother Mayhem. It's like three bloody lines that ruins the entire story. First time I saw that I was "WTF" and metaphorically waiting for the other boot to drop but that really was it. It was completely shoddy, deliberately uninspiring writing and totally dissed mental health issues in an age when we know so much more about them. I honestly wonder who signed off on it because I struggle to understand it today.

     

    See, I never looked at this as "dissing mental health".  The parallel I drew was to Babylon 5, where 

    Spoiler

    Garabaldi gets his head rewired by the PsiCorps and sent back to the station to be a sleeper agent / unwilling accomplice. 

     

    That's not really insanity as such. That's a man who's a victim of serious Mind-Crimes done to him by high level telepaths.

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  10. The Razor Viper I have is still serviceable enough. But I admit, when it's time comes, I'm not married to the brand.

    If they'd had more LEFT HANDED mice <grumble grumble grumble> I might have more brand loyalty built up.

     

    the 12-side-button mice are probably more than my brain could handle. 

    The original 6-side-button Naga I could have made work.... if it worked for us southpaws.

  11. 9 hours ago, tidge said:

    Arcs that rely on the 'total destruction' would have to be altered to be "what if? / Ouroboros" types ortweaked to simply be one-off examples of "Angry Hamidon" or as a result of general "escaping chaos in Praetoria"

    That's not all that far fetched. 

    We never SEE complete rampant DE destruction on a planetary scale all humans turned into nachos and munched upon. 

    We're TOLD about it, by NPC's who could be working off of inaccurate / incomplete information, who mght just be wrong.

     

    It could easily be spun to "there was, in fact, a giant multi-continent push.  Approximately 2/3 of Praetorian Earth's population died. Not 100%, but 66% is still enough to scare the bejeeesus out of people, and if there's a dimensional portal over there to Primal Earth, I could still see a mass stampede of refugees saying "Nope, I don't care if maybe Hamidon stopped, NOT taking that kind of chance EVER again. I'm getting the HELL out of Dodge."

     

    That could leave varied pockets of humanity struggling to recover and reconnect civilization in other places around Prae Earth that we *could* do things with later. 

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  12. 9 hours ago, Hew said:

    I have run it on teams. Its interesting, if you have some go undercover, and some straight contact, you can see a LOT of content in short order.

     

    However, you REALLY get screwed on outleveling contacts. Especially on a team, way worse than solo... 😕

    Goldside is what taught me:  I joined a team!   Menu -> Options -> MIscellaneous -> NO XP.  immediately on joining a team. 

    Does mean I might lag behind some of the teams level, but even if I know I *could* go back and do some missions via Ouroborous, I vastly prefer doing them legitly at level content. 

  13. 3 hours ago, Darmian said:

    In an ideal world, yes.  But you instantly run the danger of out levelling the existing content of Nova/Imperial/Neutropolis, and the story there is actually the main point of it, more so than Paragon or Rogue Isles.

     

    Yea. If someone is brand new to goldside, their first-ever (and probably second) goldside character is practically guaranteed to screw up and overlevel too much before they understand where the breakpoints are. Unfortuantely that does kind of require use of the "No Xp" option at points along the way.

  14. 11 hours ago, Ratch_ said:

    Hibernate (toggled) -> +1000% Regeneration / +400% Recovery
       - On detoggle -> +400% Regeneration / +200% Recovery for 30s.

     

    +200% recovery for 30s is kind of a lot.  I don't remember Hibernate's current cooldown / if that could be perma-able (flash of Hiberate the immediate detoggle to keep the +Recharge going) but the devs would want to factor in whether or not they'd want that to be possible. 

     

    So much like @arcane. I like the idea. Not willing to commit to precise numbers.  Very good brainstormy idea though.

  15. 7 minutes ago, Darmian said:

    I think if anything were to be done that (a) maintained the existing 1 -20 zones of Nova/Imperial/Neutropolis then it would probably need to be an entirely new set of zones parallel in level to First Ward/Night Ward but still effectively pre War.  (I can see that getting shot down fast by some though).  Those two new zones would get you to roughly level 40.  A final zone of 40-50 that sat on top of these and the FW/NW arc to follow, and then on into the Incarnate Trials.

     

    I'd be perfectly fine with this idea. I'd like to see what other cities were like in Praetoria.  Old Orlando?  Tokyo?  etc.  An alternate 20-40 stretch that was maybe more Science/Tech focused and a bit less Magic themed than First/Night ward would be lovely.

    • Like 2
  16. I guess I care a little bit less about what "Current" timeline is for Primal Earth, because my main character started at issue 0 in live. Long before anyone knew about Praetorian Hamidon. Several others started in the Hollows era.  Their own personal timeline starts a fair bit in the past.

     

    So who's to say my newer characters didn't start back then too?

    It all comes down to what you choose to suspend disbelief on, where you choose to mentally peg your character's story to "Okay they began HERE". 

     

    Sure Twinshot may show up and inflict herself upon me (verbage quite intentional) as a forced contact at lvl 5, but nothing says I have to acknowledge her existence or allow her to in any way be part of my character's journey except via Ouroborous.... if then.

    • Thumbs Up 4
  17. I don't want to tear up the existing Goldside Lore. 

    But there are things that could be done to use the content more.

     

    We know from the Goldside 1-20 arcs that Primal Earth was already aware of Praetoria, and Longbow and Arachnos both sent people over. So I see no reason why a low lvl hero couldn't be recruited by Dark Watcher and sent to Praetoria for those same 1-20 arcs.  Rather than have Undercover options for Calvin Scott or Provost Marchand, why not have Undercover options for Dark Watcher (Blue) or Arbiter Sands (Red)?  Same missions, same vanilla objectives, just a sprinkling that shows you Dark Watcher and Arachnos pulling some strings along the way. 

     

    a PEAT ...  not sure about.  I know I've heard people talk about a "Greenside" where you join the Devouring Earth, but .... nah, I can't really see that happening AND still have your character retain agency and choice as independant player. You'd pretty much be consumed if the DE get thier hooks in you. 

     

    I would love 40-50 content geared to let a Praetorian stay goldside for the distance. It's still *possible* now, but it ain't easy, you really have to work for it. 

    • Like 6
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  18. 33 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

    Off hand, being able to do this with hair, detail 1 and 2 on heads, chest details, hips, and backpacks would be great. I don't know if this solution is technically feasible however due to what I read about how CoX stores character data. 

    How data is stored can always be changed. But there is that whole Jurassic Park "... you didn't stop to think if you should!" angle, too. 

     

    I'm torn on the main idea. Part of me hates opening the floodgates wide to all possible combinations, because of how much garbage could be produced of just genuinely bad looking combos.  OTOH, there's probably a large number of combinations that would look awesome, and with so many combinations it's probably unrealistic to expect too much to be curated in advance.  Maybe just "let people get creative, and if it sometimes looks like fingerpaints, oh well" is really the best path forward.

    • Like 1
  19. I won't turn down more hairstyles in general.

    But I reallllllly want to be able to choose a variety of hairstyles for each hat / Helmet

    I want a Low Ponytail to go with my Fedora!

    Or a Saxon Helm with a crew cut!

    Or a baseball cap with Divine hair!

    Or... well you get the idea. 

     

    I mean, OK, the giant exposed brain?  Probably doesn't play nice with hats. 

    Road Warrior style big spikey mohawk probably doesn't either. 

    But Shirly, several more combinations are plausible.

    • Like 4
  20. I definitely attune PvP's to be able to slot them early.

     

    But, upon dinging 50, I could see the idea of mass-unslotting them during a lvl 50 respec to adjust power selections and reallocate slots-per-power.... and then auctioning the attuned PvP's, buying unattuned 50 PvP's with the proceeds, and then boosting them. 

  21. Support/Melee OR  Melee/Support, is a thing that I would love to have on Homecoming.  NOT. Repeat. NOT a straight port of what Thunderspy has. But something the HC devs spent time looking at, fiddling around with different Inherent ideas, and finding something that they believe strikes a playable if highly challenging balance. Do I expect to see that anytime soon? Oh hell no. Maybe not ever. I can dream, and that's likely all it will be. But there's a lot of people who would be interested to play around with that pairing of powersets. 

     

    MM Henchmen Customization is a Siren Song in it's own right. But while the idea sounds quick and easy, getting it to work and play nice and have visible costume differences for the Pet Buffs powers, is not small task. And it wouldn't shock me if the porting of it into HC's code caused major headaches with Pet AI and took several iterations. I do get why the Cost/Benefit has not (yet) been something that HC has wanted to publicly commit to. 

     

    Most of the rest of what Thunderspy has?  I've very glad we DON'T have. 

    Having every mob scale to lvl 50 and every mission scale to lvl 50?  Good GOD NO.

    • probably wouldn't really be done right, becuase it's probably not giving lvl 50 Hellions access to a wide variety of powers.  When they can pop powers that make players scream in frustration?  Minions spamming Flashfire and chain stunning anyone without status protection, and using Rise of the Phoenix to come back to life, etc, Maybe I'd be willing to talk turikey. But same old same old powers and more bullet spongy?  No. That's not scaling them up, that's a joke. 
    • My ulterior motive / what I'd really hate:   Probably be the death knell of me ever finding 1-44 (ie, NON-Incarnate) teams ever again. And incarnate teams, to me, are Boring. The game would very rapidly become a single player game with a chat window for me.  Still. If at some point, the HC devs decide "All Incarnates All The Time" is really what they want, well, they win, I lose. Devs have the right to do anything they damn well please.
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  22. I understand I'm in the distinct minority here. 

    But if I joined a Synapse and NOBODY had Stealth or Team Teleport, I would actually Squeee for joy. 

     

    I'm very much an anti-speed-runner, vastly preferring Kill Most / Kill All.

    And I actually enjoy travelling about the city oldschool style.

     

    "One man's trash...."

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  23. What's "thematic" all comes down to your character's backstory. 

    You can go MA / Electric for a "The Last Dragon" themed scrapper who has found "The Glow", and can use his Elec T9 to even BECOME "The Glow" for periods of time.

     

    But for the "matched" sets....  Probably my Fire/Fire/Fire Sentinel.  My Darkity/Dark/Soul Corruptor a close second.

    • Like 1
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