MTeague

If you roll up a Tanker, knowing there's a Psi hole, I'd consider it just basic sense plan around decking them out with lots of sets to build up Psi Resist. It's really not that hard to get it up to a 40-50% range. Is that "This way to cheap street"? No. But if I'm a tanker my first job is "Don't Fall Down". I would go into it planning to spend what I needed to to make that happen. It just wouldn't be my first character by any stretch.

Not entirely true. There is a Hellion boss in the Bonefire story arc who is named "Battalion". I would love to see him used as a wink and a nod to it, while they (as you say) take the long road to reallllly design battalion / coming storm content properly. (Even if "properly" might mean, 2025 or never) Maybe a "Sally" style badge for "Defeat Battaliion!" 🙂

Please refer to your character as an Empath. The "Healer" cause excessive sadness in both Pandas AND Koalas. Don't make them sad.

This I agree with 100%. For my Invul/SS Tanker, I'm unlikely to take Unstoppable, because it won't do anything extra for me that I'm likely to need. But I may want Unleash Potential from the Force Of Will tree, for that extra OOMPH of Regen and particularly Recovery.

Nothing wrong with asking. But I don't think Invuln needs any help. I've got a lvl 30 tanker running around with 38.5% psi resist that's only going to get stronger as he gets more slots. He only ever dies in extremely prolonged fights where I mismanage his endurance bar, and that's a ME problem, not a powerset problem. And it still takes him an awful long time to run out of END. (rage/hasten is so tempting... but you pay for it as you hemmorage end...)

I'm happy with my Ninja/Cold. The Cold Shields realllly help keep the ninjas alive better. He's only lvl 26, but cold shields, plus pet-aura-IO's, plus Manuvers, plus Arctic Air = quite a lot of defense on the ninjas. I do have to follow them straight into combat to make sure they retain all the extra defense. But I think the Genin are like 30% defense and the Jounin are like 35% defense. They don't get hit much. And that defense will go higher as I get more slots in the shields (right now they have only 2 slots each? weak, but he's still levelling) Also, I usually have Snow Storm going, both to slow down Runners so my ninjas don't run off and aggro other groups while trying to finish off a runner, and to help reduce incoming damage that much further by making enemy attacks take longer to recharge. I do not use any of the MM personal attacks. No snap shot, no aimed shot, no fistful of arrows. I use a six-slotted-proc'd-out Infrigidate for most of my personal damage, and a few casts of Arcane Bolt here or there. Usually my Cold powers, plus Sorcery, is enough to keep me feeling active in a fight.

I do not use Mid's. I eyeball my builds and wing my builds. So I can't post this in the format most forumites probably use. But... here's my character: I do not consider this an "authoritative build" I do consider it a baseline for discussion, given that no one else posted anything in a couple days. His fourth pool (not captured in the screenshot) is Teleport. I just like Teleport as a travel power. I wish it were as a fast animating as Jaunt, but it was his travel power in LIVE, back when he was my very first character, so it's his travel power now, whether or not there are "Better" choices out there. This is not an fully optimized build, this has some funsies/flavor choices in there. Levitate, Terrify, Psionic Toranado [yes, deliberate] are my bread and butter powers to do damage. (and of, course, Confuses...) Mesmerize and Dominate are inevitable parts of a rotation, but I slot those for CONTROL, not for Damage dealing. Also, if I'm exempted to 35+, I'll have a ton of stacks of Fulcrum Shift rolling, so I can boost my damage that way. I probably should ditch Repel in favor of Siphon Power. I know Repel isn't super popular. But I've loved Repel ever since I used it to freight-train a group to safety in Perez Park back in the Elder Days. TK I know is situational at best, but it was nice when I was levelling. Autohit extra mag hold, even if hard on your endurance, is handy to get a boss locked down now-dammit-now. I couldn't quite bring myself to fully drop the power in my last respec. I use Lockdown's in both single target and AE hold. The chance for +2 mag is hard to say no to for either power, and the six slot bonus is +3.75% ranged defense... not exactly hard to take. Could I adjust this for Even More +Recharge? Sure. But between Hasten and getting a few stacks of Siphon Speed, I've already got a LOT of +Recharge, so I haven't yet gone wild adding more LotG 7.5% recharges, and I haven't taken any powers specficially to mule more. Heck, you can see my Hover doesn't even have one. So, you may want to adjust a few things from what I've done. I like Stealth. Your milage may vary. But lets me very easily thin a herd with non-aggroing Confuses if I bit off more than I probably should chew when soloing. I should probably toss some enhancement boosters in fulcrum shift, then remove one Acc slot from there, and reassign that slot somewhere else. For Alpha, I use Nerve, because +Hold and +Confuse, and a giant heaping scoop of extra +Acc isnt' hard to take. For Mind/Kin, I never ever EVER want to miss with any of my attacks no matter what. Not a siphon speed, not a transfusion, not a hold, not anything. For Lore, I use Polar Lights. Small, unobtrusive. Still good AE. For Judgement, I use Mighty. I love the animation on it, and a PBAE smash is nice since I'm always hopping into the middle of a mob to max Fulcrum Shift stacks for myself and the rest of the melee characters on the team.

I would like it if they could take the time to be that precision guided. But I would not expect them to be able to take that kind of time.

This is really, really simple. HC Devs own these servers. We are all of us here as their guests. If they don't want Corona to be used, I'm free to consider that ridiculous. It changes nothing of course. Their house, their rules. That easy. edit: @Haijinxbeat me to it an hour or so ago.

I'm with you on Judgements. 100% agree. But At least in my case, it's seeing other players and saying "ooo, he has shiny toys, I want one of those....". Teaming or lack thereof has nothing to do with the WANTING to alt. If anything teaming increases the alts because I see more powersets with more shiny toys. It's the lack of MMO Endgame Progression Grinding (and this is a GOOD THING, I do not want that grind!!) that enables me to be alt-errific.

I understand where you're coming from. I'm not sure I arrive at the same conclusion, but I can see the argument. Really, it was the "poor form" phraseology that struck me more than anything else. I was more like "Dude this is their home and we are all of us their guests, how can it possibly be poor form for them to speak their mind?"

I must have missed the etiquette manual that you're reading from. I certainly would take no offense, and not consider it to be anything but HELPFUL for a dev to say "Codewise, that's a nightmare, I wouldn't get your hopes up, at least not at this time." or to say "Something like that is probably possible... do not take this as a promise it will get done... but in priniciple, if something like this worked its way to the top of the queue, it could happen.". Hell, I wouldn't even mind if the devs said "you know what? We could totally do that. It would take two seconds. But we're opposed to the idea, so it won't happen. Ever." I mean, I might be disappointed, but at least there would be Word From On High, and that would be that. I also would not be offended if the devs chose NOT to post anything... if they prefer just lurk and skim posts, hey cool. But "poor form"? Sorry. I can't get behind that.

So, say you decided to make a FF Corruptor. Never mind that people say FF's are useless later on. Say you wanted to build it anyway Just ta show 'em! And it sank into the swamp. So you built another one. That sank into the swamp, too. no wait, wrong skit. Real question: If you were full-bore decided to make a FF Corruptor and the AT and secondary were locked in, what would you go with for a primary blasting tree, and why? Probably will be a Technology origined character, so I have no thematic objections to a weapon-based blast set. I'm planning to steer clear of Water Blast however. It's a GOOD set, don't get me wrong, but I already have a Water/Sonic Resonance Corruptor, so Water/FF would a bit toooo close in style for my taste.

I'm definitely adding "FF Corruptor" to my "Contrarian Builds List", to be a counterpoint to the Empath/Psychic Villain I created this past weekend. (oh yea, REDSIDE Empathy.... was fun coming up with a character concept and backstory for that one....)

I've having REAL trouble seeing how you can view that statement as true. MoG lets you soak all kinds of incoming damage for it's admittedly short duration. Attacks already chained will basically bounce of you. You can keep attacking, and KEEP MoG's protection for the duration of the power. A PBAE placate is basically a glorified "You're Asleep but only to me". If you damage them, they can attack you immediately after, and will, if you don't one-shot them. A PBAE placeate would most likely either be used as a Phase Shift "get me the hell out of here!" when you bit off more than you can chew, but too bad for you if there's alreayd incoming firepower, it's GOING to hit you anyway, or, you could use a PBAE placate to pacify a squads of minions around a boss while you knife that boss down. I'm seeing MoG as leaps-and-bounds-more-valuable than iether of those two options.

If a blaster or non-defense-set character could only reach 35% defenses at max IO trick-out-ness.... I think in very short order people would pair up with someone who brought defensive buffs to the table. But I do not think this would be a good thing. Hear me out. Would people seek out Empaths, FF Bubblers, and Cold Bubblers, more? Perhaps. I also think they'd start bitching at casual players and begrudging people who didn't take Manuevers, or who didn't take Barrier, etc. Right now, because people can be entirely self sufficent, many people don't give a dam what someone else does with their build, what they add for fun or flavor. I think that would start to go away if we made it impossible to hit softcap on your own. I think people would start looking at other players like "Why didn't you make a team-optimized decision that benefits me?" I think you'd see a lot of pissing contests on who "Deserves" a Fortitude buff if an empath can't hit the whole team with it. I think people would start looking at casual players as "Dead Weight" and judging them by their set bonus list. I think this would change the nature of player-to-player interactions. And NOT for the better. For this reason, I oppose this. FF Bubblers are plenty useful. Lots of people who softcap defenses do not have Defense Debuff Resistance. A bubbler or a squad of widows, or what have you, can spike their defense up high enough that it's hard for Defense Cascade Failure to even start. Will people PERCEIVE the FF Bubbler as being useful? Probably not. If there's a string where we do not get hit AT ALL, we tend to attribute that to their own awesomeness, not to the person who is consistently and faithfully supplying us with buffs. But I would rather the bubblers remain unsung heroes, than have people start to demand that other players optimize their build for "max team performance", and get snippy when someone has a "I just wanted to try this out" build.

My picks: Mind/Kin Controller. He was my main in LIVE, still among my favorites to play. Extremely capable soloist. When flashbacked to low levels his damage output isn't so great, but if I have access to Fulcrum Shift, that's another story. Mass Hyp, Fulcrum Shift for 10 stacks, backpedal, Terrify or Mass Confuse and begin his single target rotation. Quite able to bring lockdown or buffs for whatever the team needs. Initially I chose the powerset combination because it seemed closest to an EverQuest Enchanter (of what existed in issue 0) and have enjoyed him ever since. Spines / Regeneration Stalker. My main "Rogue" villain. Runs around with ~ 50% smashing/lethal resist on top of his regen, and 20% defenses for melee/ranged. Insanely durable. I have no hesitation soaking alpha strikes on him if the team has no tank, and he just destroys. RP wise he is the Unkillable Man. Plant / Psionic Dominator. Has become my main villain. Did I mention I love Confuse? Well, yea. Plant. is Permadom'd and is just a force of incredible destruction, team or solo. Very durable with Drain Psyche, and has enough recharge to keep two Spirit Trees rolling. Psi Shockwaves, and perma'd Carrion Creepers all day long. Assault Rifle / Martial Combat Blaster. Yea yea, I know. No Aim. No Build Up. I'm Doing It Wrong. I hear that. It's still the most fun blaster I've ever played. Between Burst of Speed and Speed of Sound / Jaunt, she can bamph around the battlefield to unleash kicks or bamph around for snipes and cones and general blasting. I really really love the Run-and-Gun-and-Boot-to-the-Head feel of this character. Beast Mastery / Empathy Mastermind. Was originally created to be a silly character, just to name the Beast Mastery pet cutesy pet names, like Daisy, Buddy, Lily, Fluffy, Mittens, and Mr Snuggles, and then to top it off, I took Boxing AND Kick AND Crosspunch. And... holy crap, it works. Tankerminding, spreads teh damage out to all my pets, easily healed with healing aura, and we charge right for Great Justice all of us meleeing away. Use of the fighting pool turned her from being a completely passive actor to something much more fun, and the 40% Knockdown chance on Kick equates to pretty good damage mitigation. It's not hard to keep the buffs going whether soloing or on teams (maybe playing a Mind/Kin for so long trained me to handle a bazillion click powers...), and I'm very happy with this character.

But how many characters have a backstory > 500 characters?

I'd never heard that particular use of "Steamroll". I assumed it to be a generic term to mean "being overpowered" I agree that "kill through" is probably a better term to use in LFG.

Infridgidate can be a decent DPS power if you slot it heavily with Damage Procs and add lots of global recharge. You certainly don't have to if that's not your thing. But it can help /Cold have more of a DPS option for when you are soloing. I do think it would unbalance things too much if FF or Cold or Sonic or Thermal or Empathy or the like could use their Ally-Only powers on themselves. I feel there is already QUITE enough power-creep with IO's and incarnates and we should not be adding even more power creep into the equation. But I have seen this requested enough (ally-only-powers-on-self), that I will not be shocked if it actually happens.

I would love to see the Family explored more. Not just misc thugs in suits shaking people down on the streets of Independance Port, but stories where they play SERIOUS HARDBALL, maybe even putting a mission contact in the ground as you get too close, and then you have to continue to find other leads to chase them down rather than being pointed to a new contact as normal. Also have them start using high-tech weapons, not just tommyguns. There's been enough Rikti tech, Portal Corp tech, praetorian tech, arachnos tech, crey tech, you can't tell me a serious crime sydicate couldn't have gotten ahold of some goods, and found ways to ensure a steady supply. There's Gangster World Family mobs in Portal Tech missions, lets see some shadows of that in Primal Earth with lvl 45+ high powered wiseguys. I would also love to see two other factions opposing the Family in the zone The Outcasts. We know from tip missions and time travel that Frostfire becomes a Big Deal. Lets see some hints of that. Have him try to organize "his people" to create a few areas that are Off Limits to the Family, where even the Family fears to tread. And maybe some of Frostfire's people have to get a bit on the Vigilante side in order keep those protected sections actually protected. The Syndicate. Yep, I'm talking Praetorian Wu Yin here. Lots of people had to evacuate Preatoria, and I think he's enough of a survivor to have made the trip, and probably got at least some of his people out as well. This could be an opposition to the Family where it could get very very grey, who's really a more long term problem than the other? Also, I would love to see at least one interaction between Praetorian Wu Yin and Primal Earth Penelope Yin. She's NOT his daughter, but it might help him get some closure or sense of what his daughter might have been like had Praetor Tillman not claimed her. And maybe it would allow for a Darth Vader / Luke Skywalker moment where Praetorian Wu Yin simply can't let something bad happen to even an alternate universe Penelope Yin during a TF confrontation.

None of my stalkers even take Placate anymore. With the Chance to Hide ATO, Placate is entirely unnecessary. Still. Maybe if it were AOE, more people would take it, and it might be of more use to those players who do not sugar-daddy their alts with ATO's.

Absolutely agree. While you may be able to appeal it, I... probably wouldn't bother... because what's gonna happen? Either it'll keep being brought back to thier attention by people who don't know it' predates this whole mess, OR, they'd say something like, "look...we'll restore the name... but please just dont' play this cahracter for half a year or until a vaccine is found." It's not worth even trying to appeal, I think.

Definitely glad the game is back for gamers of all stripes. Very glad to know it may help you beyond just being a nice fun arcady stompy pasttime 🙂

I would also add some folks may enjoy VISITING said cabin, or roughing it for a week. But not for 50 weeks of the year. If I saw someone putting together some challenge run teams, I'd at least consider it. Would I make a regular ongoing commitment to it? No. Would I join for a week or two? ya, probably.