MTeague

But the important issue is, what kind of cookies are we talking? Toll House? Oreo? Oatmeal Raisin? Peanut Butter cookies? This could make or break people's decision to join.

Right there with you. Every time I say this in chat, I'm always flooded with "there's a minimal FX" option, with people completely ignoring the fact that Ablative Carapace still horks up the full shell around you with ZERO options to decline it. So I could either roll a bio and skip arguably a set defining power.... or put up with a power that I just cannot stand the look of... or I can choose a different armor set. And yea, I know Ablative Carapace is up and gone fast. But I'd still have to see it, All the Darn Time, Every time I use it. That's a deal-breaker. Now, admittedly, there is nothing that says I personally have to approve the looks of all powers. It is not the end of the world if I just .... never create a Bio Armor character.... ever. But I have always wondered why that one power got no Minimal FX when the rest of the set did.

Both of my Sentinels use their T9 secondaries. Fire/FireFire because Rise of the Phoenix is part of my Damage Rotation Baby! Plus concept requires him to be immortal, so having this power is important to me. Cold/Dark/Dark because Soul Transfer, and agian, I like having Self-Rezzes. Is it a wise powergaming choice? Probably not. Are there more meta things I could take. Sure probably. Do I care? No. Now that said, I'm willing to talk turkey on various Self-Rez powers. Giving them an effect that you can use while still alive, makes them more varied and more appealling for players to choose. But don't be taking away my self-rezzes that come with X time of untouchable to retoggle my toggles. I doubt I'm the only person who cares about these.

Snarky never said "nobody should ever run this at +4". or that people who run it at +4 are morally bad people. He said: Which is always a good idea. I don't care if person setting up the group wants an easy-peasy speed run, or a World-On-Molasses Kill All Max Difficulty run with challenge settings that disable enhancements. It's always a good idea to be as specific as you can be when recruiting. What is the team for? What difficulty settings will be in place? Challenge Settings / Badge Goals if any (Master Of, or the like). It avoids so many headaches, both for the recruitees, and for the recruiter. Anyone who's not up for it, just doesn't respond. People who DO join, knowing fully sure what they're up against, are vastly less likely to quit out halfway through.

My poor old-man's eyes wail in agony at black-on-blue, and Dark-Blue-on-Medium-Blue text.

I like that some sets just don't have snipes at all. Period. There should be some variance in toolkits.

I enjoy both my Ice Ice Tanker and my Ice Ice Blaster. I do have an Ice Controller, but I was using Cold on two other characters, so I made him Ice/Poison and named him Venomice (to be pronouced Venomous)

I'm never going to like PvP as a general rule. Too many early scarring experiences with it in Diablo 2 Hardcore. In that game, someone could declare hostility and attack you unexpectedly, and in hardcore mode for Diablo 2, if your character died, even once, for any reason, even internet lag, they STAYED DEAD. Forever. Permadeath. No getting back up. Your Deeds of Valor will be Long Remembered on your gravestone, that's all. D2 had a pack of folks who got their jollies running around being Player-Killers and TRYING to murder the characters you'd invested so much effort in. You very rapidly learned to ONLY play password-protected games, ONLY with people you knew well, and it was a round table discussion among the group if we wanted to admit someone new / hand out the passwords we used. That left a lifetimes worth of "F That" in my reaction to any PvP. That said. A consensual duel? Both parties choosing to accept duel invites, both parties choosing to accept the fight? Sure. Go nuts. I don't care if you duke it out in the Arena, or under the Atlas Statue, or in a Hazard Zone, or the Top of the Talos Hill, or some wierd remote nook in Eden. I But it probably DOES make sense to restrict it to "Not within X many yards of a Trainer or other NPC Contact". Gotta let folks who are entirely uninterested level up, adjust costumes, get their next missions, etc.

Super espectially ones name Stark or Rogers.

I mean is this just while you're trying to debug something? Or would you want this going Alllll the darn time, months on end, long after you got your binds and macros the way you want them?

Perhaps. The cure might be worse than than the poison though.

Fair point. I've never used TW (even before the nerf), so I tend to forget it. But, precedent for not caring so much about exact weapon type.

A sword would traditionally be Lethal damage, somewhat in conflict with the actuality of the powers doing Smashing damage. If a weapon look were to be added, it should probably be a Hammer or Mace to go with the Smashing. They'd also want to keep the rest of the numbers... animation time, etc, pretty darn close to that of the vanilla attacks, but there may be some that are in the right range.

Levelling in early to mid 20's I used Form of the Soul almost exclusively to handle Endurance issues. In Form of the Soul, I could do an attack chain FOR DAYYYYYSS. Never ever stop, just Naginata-Storm-Of-Doom. Any other form, I'd find I'd need to pause and kneel after every fight. Even WITH Quick Recovery (though QR was default slot only and had Power Transfer proc) Once I hit the early 30's and got enough slots to start getting decent Endurance Reduction / More Recovery, then I started foolish around with Mind and Body. Haveven't been super impressed with Mind. +Recharge never SUCKS of course, but I almost never need to pause in my attacks at all anyway. Form of the Body can be nice for some +Resist (since I'm Staff / WP, any +Resist is more layered types of sustain for me). The -Res in Eye of the Storm, doesn't suck? But I didn't really feel that I lacked for kill speed to begin with.

Level matters. If you're doing a Posi 1 and the Empath doesn't even have Fortitude? They're a Bad Emp. As in "Bad Emp! Baaaaad Emp! No treat for you!" <spray water in face> If they're in their mid-20's and they have the important available powers and a mix of attacks, I'm far happier with that than an Empath who takes ALL the attacks or ALL the Empathy powers. Late 30's and beyond, I expect them to be able to toss around a mix of attacks along with their empathy powers And while I don't see them often, I expect any MM Empath to be able to compentently control their pets between buffing and any personal attacks they may have. I don't care if they have precision control over every pet, but know when to be in bodyguard mode, know when to be "'sic 'em, boys!!!", and know when and how to quickly banish them if they're about to draw extra aggro by chasing a runner. Absorb Pain I do not personally take or use, because generally I can do the job right fine without it, and it's rarely worth it to me to have the personal debuff it applies. Ressurect is touch and go. I often take it because I figure the team will expect me to have it. But I always sort of begrudge it the power selection. Blasts, I tend to look for decent secondary effects worth stacking. Dark Blast is *quite* nice to make them miss more, kind of back-door-even-more-defense for whoever you Fort'd. Psi Blast, is a classicly thematic pairing, but -Recharge is harder to feel an observable difference, etc.

Ideally, I would change the P2W and T4V vendors to Sir (Or Madam) Not Appearing In This Game. But this is highly unlikely to occur.

It's always fun to experiment with Pool powers you don't usually use, so for that alone, I approve. Darn near every power in Super Reflexes is pure gold, though. Elude is really the most skippable of them, and i still like having Elude. (in case a sapper gets lucky and drains me... the +Recovery on Elude is Quite nice, and it basically softcaps you EVEN IF you get detoggled. Elude makes for a great "NOPE!" button.). But, lots of people DO skip Elude, and most do just fine. For sustain, I'd (of course) toss a Panacea proc into health, and then look for 1-3 other powers where I could toss a Power Transfer Chance to Heal Self proc. That should be plenty good maintenence heals for a character who's almost never going to get hit at all.

Tradition demanded that you not pick up hover until after 8 or so wipes to the Pumice / Igneous trying to get back to the mission though. Often chain-reaction wipes of two or three groups each trying to get back and running headfirst into the other guys trainwreck. 🙂

Are we talking a Goblin Deck or a Squirrel Deck here? I gotta know if I should load up with Protection from Red or Protection from Green.

Personally, I would love this, though you are correct, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth that it kills "playability", and "nerfs fun". But, in the spirit of Balance, some Villain missions would also need to be failable if you toss mass amounts of AoE damage and destroy the computers instead of download the files, kill your kidnappee instead of preserve them, or blow up the Prototype Widget that you're trying to steal.

I am sort of hoping plaques get their own Tour Guide Mission Tips. I mean, sure, I could download a map mod, etc, but I generally don't. I do stop to read them when I notice them, but I woudln't be surprised if i commonly breeze past several without even realizing it. (though to be fair, that's a choice I make, too....perfectly good solutions out there I dont' make use of)

While levelling, Dominators can feel weak, particularly in difficult missions when you're not Perma Dom yet, and you're trying to save Domination for a boss fight, but die before you get there, and now your domination bar is back to empty, and you might not have enough trash left to build it back up before the boss. I definitely experiencd that a few times in Praetoria, 1-20. Missions with several waves of laser guided ambushes can be rough when you have very limited amounts of self-maintence (Panacea proc), and when you're afflicted by pride hubris causing you to crank the difficulty slider up a bit higher than you probably should at low levels. But once you get to mid-20's, early 30's, that's when Dom's really start to shine. At least, in my experience.

Many kinds of mobs, do not resist Psi, so vs many things, you will do good damage. Those that DO resist Psi though, often resist it REALLY hard. So I would recommend either sprinkling misc damage Procs for other damage types where you can, OR, figuring out other damage dealing powers you can squeeze in on the side. Later on, you should find healing far less needed. I mean, no one ever says "Oh darn, this Empath has my back, I HATE it when that happens...." But your buffs will largely remove the need to focus healing so much. Always use Fortitude and Adrenalin Boost on cooldown. I don't care on who. If Regeneration Aura is up, you just covered all Maintenance heals the team might need. Beyond that, blast away. Go nuts. You'll NEVER have endurance issues once you get Recovery Aura, since you're always in range of it. So spend the end on blasts like it's going out of style. Recharge Debuffs are a subtle effect. You will reduce incoming damage by a fair amount, by increasing the delay between enemy attacks. But it's hard to FEEL that as viserally as Dark Blast stacking massive -ToHit and watching enemies just whiff. I think you'll be fine. It should morph into something like you're looking for as time goes by. Keeping a couple buffs rolling isn't hard once you create a bind for them.

Clearly, you're just that badass. 😀

Actually as long as you're IN COMBAT, you'll see your Brute just fine. Energy Cloak does suppress the visual cloaking effect while you punch things and a few seconds thereafter. So one OPTION is, do use it!.... once you're in a fight. And keep hopping from fight to fight to fight! Never stop punching! But I admit, on my energy/energy brute I did argue with myself if I should just skip it and take Leadership instead.