Gorgar

Just ran all but the last mission on difficulty 2 with my usual group. Everyone had a really good time with it. The colossi got a lot of oohing and aahing. New mechanics were really fun. Team of 7, all 50s: tank, brute, two blasters, controller, two defenders. We had to slow down and work together, watching our aggro and handling ambushes as they came rather than our usual method of running off and pulling everything we can see when we got bored. We teamwiped a few times, especially when we got three hostless nictus and we wound up fighting half the team. We're all really psyched to take on the last mission when schedules permit regrouping, and everyone had a great time. Can't wait to see what hard mode will look like on other TFs, and we all agreed regular mode ITF is probably a thing of the past for us. This is just way more fun.

Just ran most of the ITF on a big team on new hard mode, setting 2. I was on my dark/sonic defender and I was *really* busy most of the time. I definitely did not, after that, want to trade Scream in for a longer DPA attack such as Shout, nor did I have time for a lot of cone attacks. I used Howl way less than I usually do, because there was always debuffing and healing to do, and when I had a free second I was hitting high-priority single tough targets with single-target faster attacks and stuns. So I still think Shriek and Scream should not share a -res effect, as it punishes busy, team-oriented defenders when you're not steamrolling. I'm less objecting to nerfing the -res values (of course, I'm not a fan) and more objecting to the way it seems to specifically target people that use a chain with the quickest attacks.

Thanks, I will give that a shot. I gave him nine attacks, was attempting a blaster with nine snipes, just to see how bad it would be to fight.

Could not get custom powers to work. The relevant part of the critter file: PrimaryPower Mission_Maker_Attacks.Energy_Blast Difficulty Custom SelectedPowers 16 SecondaryPower Mission_Maker_Secondary.Invulnerability Difficulty2 Custom SelectedPowers2 255 TravelPower Mission_Maker_Movement.Flight Designation Boss Power Mission_Maker_Attacks.Energy_Blast.Sniper_Blast Power Mission_Maker_Attacks.Dark_Blast.Moonbeam Power Mission_Maker_Attacks.Fire_Blast.Blazing_Bolt Power Mission_Maker_Attacks.Electrical_Blast.Zapp Power Mission_Maker_Attacks.Radiation_Blast.Proton_Volley Power Mission_Maker_Attacks.Psychic_Blast.Psionic_Lance Power Mission_Maker_Attacks.Fire_Blast.Blaze Power Mission_Maker_Attacks.Dark_Blast.Gloom Ranged 1 Costume { Would it be possible to post some existing custom-powered critter files, so I can see examples that work? This should be interesting stuff and I'd like to pursue it. For what it's worth, I also farm actively and afk, as well as run TF content weekly. Not fond of the farming nerfs but if they don't like afk farming, I can't really argue with that. It's kind of weird that the idea people do nothing but farm keeps coming up, not sure what the point would be. All the farmers I know also play other content as regularly as they farm. Farmers are people too.

Is this ^ necessary? I for one am happy with /sonic on defenders as it is and don’t want this change for defenders. No objection for the other ATs.

Yes, I’ve been playing since about Issue 4, have a few pages of 50s, and tend to alt to what the team needs. The dark/sonic is a lot of fun to play if there’s little support, and tends to wander off if she is not needed, often to be replaced by a fire blaster or a brute. I have tried the changes, and while it is nice that some attacks are faster, I was not able to find a big team taking on an AV. Yes, solo damage is better. For what it’s worth, I have several defender 50s, and only two are /sonic. tl;dr: I do know how to play, don’t always pick the optimal powerset, and have my own, hopefully valid, priorities, which the weird new shriek/scream conflict interfere with.

Sometimes the team barely has enough damage to take down the AV. My dark/sonic has proven helpful in those cases. I for one am not at all excited about nerfing my niche. I agree sonic needs help for damage ATs but would prefer this not come at my main’s expense.

I could see the new version on corruptors too, but definitely would prefer the old version on my defenders.

Agreed. My dark/sonic defender has more or less become my main, and this is overall not great for her. I don't want to feel like I'm gimping myself for having Scream instead of Shout, when I am too busy with my primary to want to commit to a longer, higher damage, single-target attack on a defender.

Not everyone builds that way. I took Shriek, Scream and Howl but not Shout on my dark defender because I favor quick attacks on her so she can get back to debuffing, healing, etc. I know Shout is a bit faster now but I'd still prefer to avoid it.

I frankenslot Dark Regen like this: 3 heal/end/rech from various healing sets, Theft of Essence proc, Touch of the Nictus acc/end/rech, and the last slot is either Touch of the Nictus acc/heal (for tanks and tanky brutes, want the greater acc+heal values for tanking AVs) or Theft of Essence acc/end/rech (for scrappers, stalkers, and scrappier brutes, want the better rech). It has worked pretty well for me.

I am running on an M1 Mac Mini with 16G ram and have had no issues dual-boxing. I don't even notice the second instance having any impact. It's better than my dedicated Windows gaming box from a few years ago.

I only really take Petrifying Gaze any more if I've got a hold in my other powerset to stack with it, so I have it on a dark/ice corruptor. But Dark Miasma is really good as it is. I would hate to lose Fearsome Stare, which I *always* take, and if the less good powers like Black Hole were replaced, it would make an already great set pretty overpowered, I think. Also I could see Fade maybe being a bit much on a defender, since the buff values are higher on that AT. I suspect Darkness Affinity was balanced as a controller-only set and it would be better to just leave it that way.

Will hard mode be accessible to people without incarnate powers? For my own reasons, I have a lot of IOed out 50s with either no incarnate powers or only a low-tier alpha. Running at +4 is not a problem for me and I'm really interested in more challenges, but I am hoping they don't require incarnate powers or level shifts to participate.

I had the same problem, followed these instructions, am in game now. Thanks!

That's more of a link to a page that links to the page with the wst on it, which now seems to be on a new and different url every week.

All I really want to do is click a bookmark and copy the week's TFs so I can paste them into our Discord channel. Could there be a static URL that links to whatever the current week is?

I have had some of the problems mentioned in this thread in the past on Macs, but I can happily report that I do have this running on an M1 mac. I can't tell you exactly what I did, but in general I followed the instructions to get Island Rum working, then installed the HC launcher. Had to run sudo spctl --master-disable to get the OS to stop complaining about the package being "damaged", but after that it worked.

Friday night is tough for me, as I have an RPG an hour after that. I can join when that game skips a week though. Saturday is easier, will look for people then for sure.

Fruit Salad.

My experience is different, I guess. I never had Sorcery on any characters. Spirit Ward and Enflame didn't seem to do much, I never saw the point to the bonus teleport while running a flight power, Arcane Bolt was just too slow and low damage to bother with, and I wasn't taking any two of those to get to Rune of Protection. These changes will cause me to pick up Sorcery on some controllers and dominators at least, and maybe my fire/dark corruptor. Now, I'm finding Spirit Ward useful on a dominator to use on the pet. Won't prevent disaster, but they're no longer running around half-dead between fights. Enflame does enough damage (and now I can see it) that I can put it on a pet and it'll do *something*, or I can put it on an annoying stationary mob, and next time I look at it, it's dead. Well, on +2 anyway. I look at Rune as something that extends my tray of Break Frees, since now I only need them when Rune is down. Arcane Bolt is better DPA than Impale on my plant/thorn dom, which is an attack I took and slotted but don't always use. Now I tend to use Arcane Bolt when the arcane power thing happens. Net dps plus, for ranged single-target anyway. Being able to spam a keybind to turn Hover on and off to get the arcane power feels like an exploit, probably should be fixed, but I like the idea behind it. Mystic Flight is maybe a little nicer to use, but I still almost never take Fly without also taking Hover, and then always fighting in Hover. So the point to Mystic Flight still evades me, especially with the buffs to Teleport itself. As a reference point, the character I tested most on is 50, IOed for defense but not perma-dom and without incarnates.

This (plus the xquartz/wine-devel instructions) got me up and running on an M1 mini. Thanks!

I found teleport to be tremendously more forgiving on beta. Don't have to be as precise in the timing. Was able to much more easily cross zones. The extended hover time is super nice with my tp bind for going straight up. Gives me time to look around and decide where I want to go. Also it seems like you can move after porting faster. I remember a time of mandatory hovering that felt clunky, which seems to be gone. All in all, it's a lot easier to manage on a character that did not take Hover. TP changes are very cool.

I have tested Evasive Maneuvers on a few characters. The extra speed is really nice. I did have a use for Afterburner in combat: tanking AVs solo while the rest of the team concentrated on a different AV. I'd get GW's (or whoever) attention, lead them around the map, let the rest of the team fight someone else, drop Afterburner and taunt if I lost aggro. EM won't provide the defense for that. Not sure how important that is, just pointing it out. If EM gets changed to provide defense as long as I don't attack, that would help my particular case. I could taunt, deal with lowered defense for a bit, then it would come back without me having to toggle it off and back on. Neat. The one problem I still see with EM is that .52 end/s is pretty expensive. I'd like to be able to fight with it on, but during combat, some of the benefit does not occur. It would be really cool if, while it was not providing defense, the cost dropped down somewhat. I have a lot of flying melee characters who would love to run this all the time, but probably not at the current end cost.

I haven't tested Mystic Flight but on a character with normal Teleport, you can rest in between ports if you want. There's a 15 second period after a port, where you just hang in the air. So if you were running low on end, you could just pause a few seconds between ports. It also works really well with my keybind for porting max range straight up. Plenty of time to look around and decide where to go next. Having a bind for port max range straight ahead works well too. Used to require a little timing to keep moving forward without clicking too soon and getting turned around, but now it's really forgiving and TP with binds is a lot easier to use.