MTeague

Walk along the sidewalks content in my absolute invincibility and shove heroes into oncoming traffic while saying stuff like "Isn't <name of guy I just shoved in front of a truck> the best?"

I don't think I've ever seen a police chief meeting be a placeholder that I *have to* clear to get a different story arc / badge mission to activate. And *most* of the police chief missions aren't really that hard. Tedious perhaps, but so is going through a five story buidling to find the kidnappee to rescue. It's just part of being a hero. Somedays you rescue people, somedays you put the smack down on a criminal operation that's gotten out of hand. (annnnnnnd somedays you do a Mayhem Mission and blow up most of a downtown area....) Now, when the police chief wants me to go into the Abandoned Sewer Network for 50 Rikti, I do sigh deeply and decide just how much I care. "C'mon chief. Can we wait until they actually threaten someone on the surface?"

I suspect the original T9 was more about making sure you hack a clicky super boost to your resistances so you could keep going even in the face of being de-toggled / drained by sappers / carnies, etc. And it was probably handy in the *very* early issues. After so many changes to other powers, and how certain effects work, and the baselining of the Fitness pool, and the introduction of IO's and set bonuses.... not so much.

Vermillion Visage. and there's always the option of other colors. Cobalt Casque, etc.

I don't see any need for a change. It's not hard to scoop up some of the lesser used one and convert them 10-20 times. And it's not that hard to squirrel away enough money to buy a few superpacks yourself. Mostly I'm with @Bopper. These things come and go in cycles. If people notice a price spike as certain ATO's get rare, you'll see a lot more go on the market as people try to cash in. Maybe they'll be converted-used-to-be-Kheldian ATO's. Maybe they'll be ATO's from a freshly bought pack. I've seen dry spells and floods a couple times since Jun 2019. Not really thinking developer action is warranted yet.

I see no point to a currency that doesnt' do anything, and I see no benefit for allowing a Guild to stock up a currency instead of individual players. If you truly *care* whether or not your SG members play in /sg mode, *ask them* to do so. If you don't trust them to, maybe they're not actually your friends, and maybe that's because you're trying to dictate their playtime for them.

I have never used Envenomed Daggers and never will. None of the Amplifiers, either. I do not like flinging money at a P2W vendor for a combat advantage. That offends my sensibilities. Every player is free to do what they will of course, but that's my stance on it, my own personal self-imposed-restriction for my characters. That said, I will periodically go get myself a Shivan Shard from Bloody Bay. I recognize some consider them not much different / consider me slightly hypocritical on this point. My stance is Shivan Shards were available long before there were ever Veteran Rewards or a Paragon Market, and to me, such things matter.

Seriously. It's like when a PC suddenly dies on you. Yes, I could spend a week and a half looking around and researching for what's a good box to replace it with, and what kind of components I'm really going to want to put it together to meet my specific needs.... Or I could drive like a madman to Micro Center and fling money at them like a seriously Jonesing addict, because I NEEDS MAH NEW COMPUTER!! NAO!!! Not that I've ever done this, you understand. <nervous laugh> No, of course not. This is purely hypothetical, of course!

Gonna say up front, I am not a serious author of any kind. I'm a programmer by trade, and gamer by hobby. But I've done some novelization-style "Journal Entries" for my characters in various single-player sandbox games and.... it's pretty addictive once you get past the first few. I start creating 17 chapter backstories for how my character even came to be where the game is set, and flesh out motivations / things they care about / non-existent NPC's of family members and friends they think about along their journeys, etc. But that style of doing "one journal entry" at the end of each play session has really helped me both a) get in some writing, a little bit at a time, and b) peridocally read through each one, realized I've created discrepancies, and go back and figure out how to resolve them, keep their timelines straight, etc. It's kind of wierd and to some people it will sound like a self-inflicted second full time job, but it's really been kinda fun.

Well, I do think Cole and Recluse would have been doing the "My Dear Good Friend" (spoken in Londo Mollari voice, if you've ever seen B5), fully intending to dispose of the other one once they were no longer necessary / too likely to become a rival for supremacy, and both of them probably knew that from first contact. Or at least, would have suspected the other of that. Arguable. Maybe you can find something that temporarily de-powers Cole, just like Darrin Wade de-powered States in order to kill him. That doesn't necessarily mean that exact same trick would have worked against the Hamidon itself. Or maybe a sufficiently strong Psi attack against Cole might revert him to a toddler playing with his crayons. But which bounces against Hamidon. If you don't know for sure that your Anti-Cole weapon WILL work against PraeHami, then congrats, you still just damned the planetary population of praetorian earth. Soo.... my order of operations would be Kill Hami first, THEN get Moose and Squirrel Cole and Keyes.

I suspect there's also a sizeable chunk of people in the power structure who think Cole is in fact a brutal and overbearing Tyrant, fully deserving that name.... but who, from the history of Praetorian Earth, understand that He Stopped Hamidon, when no one else could. Ie, maybe the guys a jerk and tyrant.... but without him, we'd all be DEAD, consumed by Tellurian Plague, etc. Maybe he's not the ruler we'd like to have, but if it's Cole or be consumed by the Devouring Earth, then "OK Mister Cole, What can we do for you on this fine morning?". Because that was always one thing that bothered me with the Resistance. Sure. Say you bring down Cole. Either kill him and all his praetors, or send them packing. Then what? Next time Hamidon makes a strong push forward.... you're screwed. I mean, yes, Freedom of THOUGHT should at least be allowed even if Freedom of Expression isn't.... but in context of the Lore, I can see a number of people choosing Cole, not because they like him, not because they WANT to be ruled by him, but because of what lives beyond the Sonic Fences. The Carnival of Light and Eltontown are out there, sure, but they have thier own sonic fences too, and the center of First Ward is testament to the fact that those sonic fences will only hold Hamidon at bay for just so long. Now, we as players who have read the lore and already done the Underground Trial know that Cole never really "Beat" Hamidon as such. But the NPC's who live in this world? They don't know that. From their point of view, literally nothing mankind has really stopped Hamidon cold except for Cole himself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

/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. 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.

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.

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.)

Don't you understand!!!?!? They're ENJOYING IT WRONG!!!111!!!oneone!!!11 (/sarc)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.