Greycat

Somehow I think I need to reexplain. Let's take a team, it doesn't matter what they're doing - tf, missions, on an MSR, whatever. We have three level 22s - a - let's take blaster, a kheld for the hero EAT, and a VEAT. They hit 23. They all run out and get slots in between missions. Yay. They level. They hit 24. The blaster and Kheld pick up a new power and rush to join the team, because, well, new power, it's helpful. The VEAT now has a choice: - Go to trainer. Completely respec powers because they have to choose a branch. Reslot enhancements (and why do they not "sell" like they used to?) Reset all their powers in their tray. Rejoin team. - Ignore the level. They don't get any other powers, when they hit 25 they can't put in slots - because they have to respec. Stay with their level 24 powers for however long. Other two hit 25, 26, this is a great team and they stick around to 30. They have their powers up to 30. The VEAT... has to respec to 24, readd, etc, etc. etc. Yes, there are "costs" to ATs - if I'm running a blaster, by default I'm squishy but doing damage (barring IOing things out.) Kheld? I deal with Quantums. Mastermind? low personal damage, but pets. This, to me, goes beyond a "cost" and more to one of many annoying things about the AT. By splitting the ATs into bane/crab or widow/fort from level 1, this is avoided all together. Yes, it means "villains have twice as many EPic ATs." Which... I don't care. (It also has the side effect of neatly "fixing" the whole "if one build has a crab backpack, they all do.")

You're misunderstanding. Let's take - any non- VEAT AT. Doesn't matter if they're running missions, on an arc, or in a TF. They hit 24, head out, see a trainer, pick a power, maybe slot something they have handy, and keep going. For a VEAT, it's hit the trainer and be told "You are respeccing." You can skip it, sure - and have no additional powers, and keep having no additional powers no matter how much you level, until you do that respec. Edit: It's not a mission. It's what happens as you level a VEAT. You're stuck when you go to get your level 24 power pick - you *must* respec to pick it or any further powers.

You can continue the mission - it doesn't halt you like that - but where every other AT can just stop, pick up a new power (and at 24, it is a power selection, not slots or I'd be less irked) and keep going - and if they level a few more times, keep doing it - for a VEAT, it's a forced respec if you hit the trainer. (And of course, being a respec it's not just "reselect powers and slots from level 1," but "put all your powers, temp powers, etc. in all your trays ignoring what you had where already.") *And,* of course, if you prefer a Huntsman build over Bane (which I tend to,) it means instead of picking a power and going on, you're repicking from level 1, reslotting, resetting all your enhancements and powers... to get right back to where you were.

So I ran another VEAT for a while. Hit 24, mid task force, and hit one of the things that has always irritated me with them. "You are now level 24. You must undergo a forced respec." This is where you choose your branch - bane/crab or widow/fort. I have always, *always* been annoyed by this. Not just for the hard stop in a situation like I was in - I'm not respeccing and holding everyone up mid-SF - but for the fact it feels like I've wasted 24 levels just not being what I want that character to be. Can we *dump* this, and preferrably just have "Bane" (huntsmen following this branch) and "Crab," or "Widow" and "Fort," just be separate ATs? (Then we can work on the other irritants, like "get a better storyline" and "all the costuming requests.")

One big assumption being made here - Playing the story lines does not necessarily "promote socialization." I can solo them from 1-50 and never team. Given the build, that may include strike/task forces. And if I can do the story arcs faster solo, and then get even *bigger* rewards... why would I team instead of farming those story arcs?

Yeah. Working as intended, not a bug.

Early, early, early on... purples. Yeah, you only have 3, 4 or 8 spaces, but... purples. And yeah, the staff helps. (No, I will never ask my team to take them out for me. They showed up just for me, the least I can do is beat on them personally.)

Want worse? Admittedly this was live, but... fighting a GM. Get a Rad/ defender. Who had... just the AOE heal, or pretty close, and all the secondary.

I'd disagree. Especially lower level, locking something in place (instead of just slowing them down - if they'll even slow down - or dropping, say, those little flying clockwork out of the air is more useful than an easily avoided placed patch. Mind you, I take both. But I would never call web grenade particularly skippable.

"Force multiplier who will get very annoyed at being called a healer." 🙂 (Yes, I really wish the H word would drop from peoples' vocabularies.) A few things in general. These talks about who's useless or... less needed make a few assumptions. Like that everyone's at 50, and that everyone *at* 50 has ubermegamassive capped to everything builds. And that's just not the case. Yes, someone casually building after a while might hit... say, 15-25% defense, a bunch of resist, etc. but that leaves room for buffing. (Not to mention how many fairly common things will start debuffing that defense - like machine guns - once they get a hit in.) The other thing is that people seem to just focus on the primary in these discussions. No, defenders on a team are not damage powerhouses on their own. So embrace that. Make a team build and build up your secondary's debuffs, if possible. It certainly doesn't hurt - though some, of course, are not as impactful as others (the common complaint about Electric's end drain not really doing much, for instance.)

Maybe it's because I enjoy emping on raids (and thus, yes, I take a rez too,) but ... yeah, I'll pretty much always take CM. I never assume I can rely on anyone else to do it or pay attention to Clarion (or that a tank running off to herd during a MSR isn't going to run into a pack of Rikti mages.) Besides, it doesn't need slotting, so I can stick those slots into something else. Not to mention I don't tend to do complete rebuilds at 50, and it's extremely useful while leveling. 🙂 About the only CM-like power I tend to skip is Clarity.

Not if we move it! We've got an asteroid field and other planets to mine, I'm sure we can work out some sort of shell, engines, navigation... Eh, who needs a moon anyway.

What are you fighting? Different groups can challenge ATs in different ways as you level up. If all you're fighting is Council, for instance, you're missing out. If you're running teams with incarnated out 50s, well.. yeah, they're melting things not created for that degree of power. What are your difficulty settings? You can adjust the level and team size the game will spawn for, even if you're solo. (If you see people talking about running +4x8, that's what they mean - enemies spawning at +4 levels, set for 8 characters.) Also, don't play a "healer." Use all of your power sets. An Empathy or Pain domination Defender or Corruptor has secondary effects, buffs and debuffs to work with - even in their attacks. If what you're concentrating on is "I need to heal," yeah, you'll feel useless in the upper levels in most instances.

Paragonwiki may be in "archive" mode, but the information it has on what is in what pool for what AT is, as far as I'm aware, still accurate. Check it ahead of time.

I'm not necessarily sure about the ideas (not against, but not sold) - then again, I consider this, Empathy and FF "solo friendly" in that I can make a second build and take more solo-focused powers on that build, so I tend not to see it as as much of a problem. The biggest irritant to me on the set is Clarity, in that it comes so *late* (even when all we had were SOs, it was so late as to be useless.) Moving the mez protection to the large bubble and putting something else there... I wouldn't argue. *What* could be debated.

WHich is why I put in the "essentially." 🙂

I didn't tell you how to post. You did, however, suggest telling people how to play.

Surprisingly, I'm actually somewhat on the fence on this - though I don't disagree. On the one hand, it doesn't stop a sleep from doing part of its job - for instance, shutting down a FF bubble will still happen even if that sleep is only a fraction of a second long. And it's consistent, in a way, with other DOTs a player can take (such as... bah, what's the name. The "fire" from Sorcery.) Nothing stops a player from picking up a power that can cause issue with one of their own powers, so part of the argument could be "so why should Interface be special?" Besides, you can pick the non-DOT-ing branch, other than the T4 of most branches. On the other, and as I'm typing this I think this is probably the thing that makes me really agree (ok, outside of my personal like of sleeps and their utility) is that unlike the situation I just mentioned, Interface isn't a "power" you can choose to use (or not.) It adds that proc to every damaging attack, and some sleeps are damaging - though they ignore their own damage (essentially) when they put someone to sleep. And, again, the T4 doesn't give you the choice to not have a damaging proc in many of the interface branches. (Diamagnetic can do a double debuff, for instance.) Sooo... while I can see an argument for "why should this small portion of a small branch of powers be special?" (since not all sleeps do damage, and wouldn't fall under the "damaging powers cause a chance to proc" description,) it's hard to find other powers that become self-defeating in this way, so yeah... wouldn't hurt to look at it. (Plus it is a fairly small number of powers, so it's not a major shift in the game.)

Just don't go around telling other people how to play,

There already are some. A sleep will shut down pretty much any FF bubble, for instance, that's not generated by something like a Sky Raider shield drone (and those can be confused.) Even if the enemy is woken up right away, there's a recharge time on that power being used again. (I still, frankly, say sleep is undervalued since what's concentrated on is "oh, it gets broken so easily" versus what else it's actually done.) A lot of buffs they get or defense can also have AOE holes, though (come to think of it, I think Nems affected by the leadership buffs of a LT dying have this.) Of course, holds keep anything from happening - but we have some enemies who just become stupidly resistant. (Shouting romans make control annoyed.)

You'll have a minimum of 5 (for the 10, 20, 30, 40, 50.) How bad could it get... Double XP to not get INF or the related badges. Non-healing (no heal badges) support (low damage to avoid those badges.) Obviously no task forces. Nothing relating to time travel. Log out in city zones away from cemeteries, base portals and trams. (Assuming this isn't PL'd in one sitting.) Probably best as a duo, though it'd be low XP, on settings that would avoid bosses. Avoid Skulls. Possibly focus on Arachnos, but rush past wolf spider levels? And keep things too low to get toxic tarantulas. I don't know, sounds like a minefield of things to avoid...

I've really wanted to like traps. And I normally do - at least solo. I mean, come on, doing Lady Grey's mission from Ramiel to unlock alpha - Waltz in, take several minutes to set up trip mines where the Rikti ambushes come in or where the portals spawn in the end room, *trigger* said ambushes/portals, watch them dissolve. Fun. On a team... not so much. I might get one trip mine out before the spawn is being engaged, and they're usually dead before the animation finishes. And time bomb... I placed one on live that I'm still waiting to have go off.

Heh. Yeah. My fire/storm 'troller on live almost forgot what that blue bar was for a long time.

Didn't notice this earlier. The NPC you mention isn't ... exactly separated into their old selves. They even say "I'm not (Warshade's name, which I'm forgetting.) I'm not me. I don't know who I am." (Paraphrased.) Which - more headcanon for me than "lore says this," though I think lore kind of leans this way, too - is more "This is the result of being forcibly torn apart" than "this is what happens to any separated host," since after all the host can force out the Kheldian with enough willpower... which they wouldn't have if they weren't "them," I tend to play mine as two conjoined but still distinct beings - you *can* talk to "the Kheldian side" in them. I've had them partially separate so one could keep watching Star Trek after their host fell asleep, or have the host in a coma while they (both) recovered (and they were able to be talked to, eventually.)

2 and 3 I don' tmind. 1... ehhhhh. 1 is shady to me. Though I'll admit 1 tends to annoy me most due to some arguments on live where the person bought them low and posted them at "what they're supposed to sell at." To which my reaction is generally "that's not for you to determine." And, frankly, I usually got some fairly irritating responses. Hypothetical example. HC has an event. It results in me getting 10 ATOs just through playing over the course of that week. I can use a few, and I do. I have five left over, no real interest in them or in converting them. (Definitely hypothetical. With all my alts, I can use them, but that's neither here nor there.) I look at the market, they're usually going from 6-10m. All the ATOs have bids sitting there waiting. I decide to list them at 750,000. Why? Well, for me these have no "worth." I did nothing special for them - I played, they dropped. I didn't farm, I didn't have to spend anything to craft them. Besides that, there are obviously people that want them that don't like that price for whatever reason and, what the heck, why not let someone else enjoy them. Maybe it's one of their few characters and they don't play often, I don't know, but I want players to get them for- well, *playing.* What I don't want, and what would annoy me, is someone just getting it because "it shouldn't be that cheap" and just turning around and relisting it at 6-10 million. And no, I'm not kidding about having that exact reason thrown at me. Usually followed by a variant of "the market will decide prices," which ... is somewhat hypocritical, since it didn't just decide that price, someone planning on flipping it did. Now, I'm not saying that's why everyone who does so does it - I'm not psychic and if I were I'd have better things to look into. On live, that conversation (paraphrased) pretty much soured me on people playing the market. (Here, honestly, I don't care. *shrug* Do your thing. Enjoy.) And if I'm being really honest, what irked me most were the people seeming to brag about it more than the action itself. "I made X billion by flipping!" is annoying. "I made X billion by buying, converting and reselling" doesn't, since (a) there's some cost to the person doing it and (b) they're - in theory at least - puttin gtime into figuring out *what* to convert to, so there's a degree of... "earning it," I suppose. But, like I said. Here, I don't care. I've had enough happen IRL that the most ire it gets from me now is a head shake and a "whatever."