DR_Mechano

Yeah there are quite a few enemy groups and such that could be added in which would broaden the horizons on Lore pets. Like I said for my lady Merc Rogue literally none of the lore pets are a good fit, they're either a bit too wacky or just not in theme at all.

Behave! (and I don't mean that in a 'austin powers' way...I mean that in a teacher kind of way) Everyone has stated their opinions. Now I know Solarverse and myself are never going to see eye to eye and probably never going to like each other but even I will admit he has been dogpiled on a bit much in this thread. He has views that a large majority don't agree with and that's fine. Trust me I know what it's like to be the center of a dogpile. My topic on 'calling for transparency' caused me to be dogpiled on by the community because I was a touch worried about things 'behind the scenes' with Homecoming and slightly miffed that I felt like I got what I deemed as a non-answer from the devs (alright fine, they answered but I personally felt like the answer I got wasn't very satisfactory to me...even if it was a very valid answer) on a specific subject. We've basically hit the circular argument section that I pointed out earlier in the topic. Everyone has stated their opinions on difficulty and now it's a shouting match back and forth between two sets of parties, neither of which is reading the others posts and more just shouting. Solarverse wants a specific kind of game. I'm guessing post ED but pre-IOs which would put things at the Issue 6, 7 or 8 territory. This way you'd have access to both CoV and CoH but without IOs (which were bought in with Issue 9) and unfortunately it would take a LOT of legwork to make that kind of server, like genuine classic WoW private server style legwork (which took people many years to actually get vanilla private servers up and running despite starting work in Cataclysm). Also, didn't know this but Issue 9 bought in the Statesman Taskforce...huh...neat...(always thought it came in with CoV in Issue 6). In fact if you want an issue 5 specific server this means the hardest TF in the game is....Shadow Shards TFs. Which I don't remember people being excited to do even back then especially since it awarded just a badge...and that was it... I mean I can't speak for anything pre-issue 6 because I joined with CoV.

I honestly thought that Gun Drone got the taunt from live because it made sense...on live...like a left over thing from like Issue 8 times, adding it on HC seems to be a very odd choice. Yeah that REALLY seems like a bit of a daft move giving it a taunt because 'aggro control' when no other blaster secondary either has or needs such a thing. Especially without a rather large HP increase. I was actually looking forward to getting Gun Drone on my BR/Dev blaster...now I see I have two completely useless powers in my secondary (Gun Drone and Time Bomb). Hell at this stage I'm not sure why we don't get Time Bomb to be a clone of Crabs Omega maneuver without the stupidly long set up time. I mean that power does everything Time Bomb SHOULD do.

I literally said nothing of the sort. You're putting words in my mouth, that wasn't an attempt to 'stop posting' it was merely question and the chance for you to probably take a breath, relax and stop being on the offensive all the time. Maybe back away for a little while. You're getting awfully upset and aggressive over arguments of difficulty in a video game.

I thought you were done with this topic Solarverse?

Yeah Silver Mantis on the MLTF is a HUGE pain in the backside since I swear Impale and Spine Burst are typed as Toxic and not lethal/toxic. She is honestly the only one out of the villain rookie squad that ever gives my characters trouble. Though I have yet to fight her with my Psi/Bio character...should be interesting.

I'm just talking from experience with regards the epeen waving statement ESPECIALLY when it comes from other MMOs. Most people want to do content that makes them feel better than 'the casuals' but don't want to do content that's explicitly the most difficult, they just want to be 'above' someone. You keep saying you don't want to change the game but yet, here you are again, bemoaning the fact that the game is easy. If you didn't want to 'change the game' you'd just not say anything but...again...you bought up the whole 'the game is too easy'. Plus I do have to question why people want to feel 'needed' and desire constant praise and reinforcement on that front. If my Fire/Dark controller is doing everything right, nobody needs to notice because I'm shutting down, immobilizing and otherwise debuffing mobs and the group carries on as always. When my Psi/Bio scrapper took over from our Brute after he went down on a +3 Dr Khan TF and proceeded to tank Reichsman for the remaining 25 minutes it took to drop his enormous health pool I was doing what needed to be done, I didn't expect praise for it (and didn't get it), I just kept aggro and pulled him away from the Brute so he could rez. As the quote from Futurama goes "if you've done everything right, people will think you've done nothing at all.." just do what you do and keep going. Also if you want to do more difficult content, it is there, like it or not the option is there and the people constantly screaming for a global increase in difficulty never do it.

You know there ARE difficulty settings in Ouro right? They don't offer any extra rewards but you can get badges through running them with the various settings on. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ouroboros_Badges Like 75 badges for it. You can learn more by looking at the flashback system stuff here: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Flashback

We've been through this all before. Basically self imposed challenges aren't 'acceptable' for people looking for more difficulty. What they're actually looking for is a 'I can brag about doing X content because it's above the casual level' and nine times out of ten these people want exclusive rewards for doing said content for e-peen waving reasons rather than doing difficult content as a matter of challenging themselves. And thus we argue back and forth, one side wants to be 'teh bestorz' and the other side is 'well challenge yourself' and then they fire back with 'yeah but that isn't going to offer me any exclusive rewards' and then the other side fires back with 'You should do it for the sake of the challenge' and they go off in a huff or restate their first point over again and the cycle continuous. Unfortunately people seem adamant about not making their own "no-IOs, only SOs, no Incarnates" server despite there apparently being a "really big call for it".

The rewards are, as Sif mentions, just the same as everything else in the game, XP and Inf. 95% of content does not award badges or give major rewards. You do it because you can. Though both myself and you have argued about 'self-imposed challenges as content' until we were both blue in the face and generally decided that what you wanted and what I wanted were two different things

There are specific arcs made to challenge people, the 801 series of arcs is meant to be a challenge to even a full team of Incarnates for example.

1) As mentioned Destiny is a game changer on a lot of builds. Ageless allows things like Spines/Fire, TW/Bio and numerous others to not have to worry about endurance anymore AND perma-hasten offering +7.5% recharge even at its lowest point (that's an extra LotG Unique basically). Barrier provides 5% def to all at its lowest point which is more than the +3% given by any of the unique IOs that offer defense. Clarion provides enough status protection to deal with most day to day problems. I honestly get the feeling people are stopping at the rare Destiny and going 'that's enough' and not actually looking at the tier 4 versions which are MUCH better and last 120 seconds and recharge in 120 seconds. They're perma out the box. 2) Lore pets can add a LOT to a character, again it feels like you just haven't looked at the abilities some of them get. The Carnie invulnerable pet offers a +15% damage boost for 5 minutes (it lasts 1 minute but it recharges quicker than the duration, thus they will always keep it up on you). Longbow Cataphract offers a massive -250% regen which is a huge boon to soloing AVs or GMs on a set that doesn't have inherent -regen. The Banished Pantheon Ravager puts out enough DPS to help burn through most targets very quickly. Banished Pantheon, Carnies and Tsoo offer enough DPS to make AV soloing much easier especially once they're at very rare stage. Again I feel like a lot of people just stop at the rare or merely surface glance at the Incarnate system without actually getting deeper in to it.

Actually you'll find most high End builds will run Ageless, Barrier or Clarion because once you hit T4 they're perma AND give decent bonuses even at their lowest point. T4 Ageless basically means you never have to worry about endurance again and provides enough recharge to push some builds into perma-hasten territory (TW/Bio builds tend to run it for this exact reason). Barrier offers you 5% defense even at its lowest point, which means that builds can stop at getting 40% defense and then concentrate on other things. Clarion provides status protection and even when its at its lowest it still provides enough for day to day non-incarnate content so you're not worried about getting mezzed on say a Defender. So yeah Ageless, Barrier and Clarion basically do fine, it's the others that provide bonuses which are a little less...interesting...that are generally things nobody cares about. Incandescence is useful for pretty much one fight in the whole game and not a lot else. As for the above post by @Obus Form about the Alpha being a gap filler...that's actually not true. The Alpha, in high end builds, is meant to be an enhancer. This is why high end damage builds will run Musculature for moar damage since with IOs their defenses are finished and with Ageless they nolonger have to worry about Endurance gain and get benefits of +recharge.

Thunderspy didn't add Whip melee, they added telekinetic assault which just used the whip animation to summon floating swords (which, to me, looked kinda jank but that's just me). They also reused all three existing whip animations for all the attacks and didn't add any more animations in.

Obviously this suggestion is something 'for the future' since the dev team are currently very busy with other things but I'd like to see additional lore pet options allowing for more generic themes. I mean for a Robots Mastermind you can use Robotic Drones or Warworks but for your Thugs mastermind or your Natural hero/villain none of the Lore pets really fit. Some of my suggestions are: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Spetsnaz_Commandos Add in a copy of Mercs Field medic as the support pet. Not great DPS I imagine but handy if someone just wants more 'special forces' style soldier option to go with their natural origin or Mercs MM. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Wailers Another good Demon option for those that aren't all fire and brimstone. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Paragon_Police_Department Good for your Cop heroes naturally and there is a lot to pick from. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Knives_of_Artemis Yes original KoA not the Knives of Vengeance...was deeply disappointed they weren't an option for my lady merc Rogue since KoV just doesn't quite fit the theme. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Malta_Operatives Same as Spetsnaz but more specific though can also be used for more 'high-tech' style Merc with the Zeus Titan Boss pet and Gunslinger. Now ones that could be added but would require a lot more work would be a Beasts style lore pet. Using the Spider vanity pet model as a boss pet as a clone of the Toxic Tarantula Arachnos boss and a Lioness lt for the boss line and a Lioness and a Howl (sonic) buff wolf pet as the invulnerable pet.

Considering Stalkers easily out burst and out single target most brutes by a country mile. StJ/Bio Stalker can literally 3 shot an Elite boss with its opening salvo once fully IO'd out, even the mighty TW/Bio scrapper (which also outdamages its Brute counterpart) has a hard time replicating burst damage on that scale. I'm guessing the OP is comparing a fully IO'd out Brute to a barely level 20 Stalker without the two game changing ATOs (Chance for build up refresh anywhere and the Chance for Hide proc in Assassin's strike) And yes I do find it amusing it's always Brute players that complain the game is too easy and not, for example, any sort of Defender/Controller player because most of them have to choose between Single target or AoE and can't really have both to the extent a Brute or Scrapper can.

Does it involve said fruit being thrown back violently at the person who bought it?

So Jimmy when are the plans to revamp the Synapse Taskforce? 😄 (I am joking of course, I imagine you guys are busy with everything else).

I vote yes to that and will say that, if the tech somehow exists, that in the future sprint be given the power customization treatment and have Beast run, Ninja run and all the various 'prestige' versions simply selectable from a drop down list. Though I have no idea if this is even possible with sprint since I imagine it's treated more like a perma-temp power than a part of the powers options itself.

Also with the merits to convertors ratio it also means that things have a definite 'value' now that they can all be bought for merits. So 10 merits are worth, roughly, 2.7 million inf when transferred into convertors, meaning 100 merits is worth 27 million inf, this means that things like Very Rare IOs all have a flat value of roughly 27 million inf and we've seen that most Purple IO sets will hover at around that mark (if not slightly cheaper). This means there is an absolute upper limit to what people are willing to pay since you once you get past the 27 million inf mark, it becomes better to just save up merits and buy them that way. So yes the HC dev team have really made it so that we'll likely never again see the stupidly high 2 billion inf price caps on a singular IO.

I'm honestly surprised the Windfall temp power isn't in the P2W vendor. The other ATO temp booster powers are in the (Survival etc.) so I don't see a problem with someone getting the windfall one. Though this does make the problem of the rich getting richer since the people that would be able to afford to stack it to 8 hours would be the very people who farm inf and thus we'd end up with inf-lation (ha a word pun, I iz smart) because the people who earn a lot of inf (i.e farmers) would be able to earn MORE of it quicker. So that's probably why it's not in there...bummer.

Getting ahead of yourself there! First we have to have Secret Sandwich war where it turns out all the best sandwiches are replaced with evil alien imposter Sandwiches THEN once that fact gets known and it turns out people ate those alien Sandwiches which are mind controlling them THEN we get Sandwich Civil War.

Yeah but then we'd have to do things like Years Crisis Infinite a few years later to try to recapture the magic that the original cross over had...and keep doing it every 2-4 years hoping that we'll once more get people talking like doing Smashpoint: Paradox which somehow has Back Alley Brawler going to an alternative universe where all the heroes are at war with one another and the entire world is going to end, then have the servers rebooted with a New 8 where somehow Statesman never actually died or something...

Generally Strikeforces were designed with the lessons learned from player responses to the Taskforces. So yeah they cut a lot of the chaff from them and made them designed to be done in a single session rather than the way the original TFs were designed which was they were meant to be done over a period of several days and they were shocked players were doing them all in one sitting. As for bad SFs...hmm...there's none that I would say are truly terrible...some like Silver Mantis can be annoying if you're not prepared but otherwise...eh...most of them are ok.

The problem with SS is that you only really need Rage, Footstomp and Knockout Blow. You take Haymaker or Jab because you're forced to take it but they're very lackluster damage wise. Nobody ever takes Hurl. I took handclap as a means for CC AND slapped both the KB>KD Sudden impact IO and the Force Feedback +chance for recharge proc in it which makes it way more useful.