Greycat

No thanks. It would move Tactics from something that might be usable to something I'd flat out avoid. Plus, from the sound of it, the -KB is affecting the team like everything else in the power? If that's the case, *absolutely* not. (If it's not, disregard.)

This, i wouldn't mind. If I know I'm making a character a Crab, I can *be that* from level 1 instead of feeling like I'm wasting my time and 24 levels of the character. As for the other... comments, I never stated this was a surprise. I *did* state the 24 respec was something I have *not liked* about them since live, and it's one of the reasons I avoid rolling them, despite otherwise enjoying massive altitis. (Mind you, there is a *lot* I don't like about VEATs. But this, to me, was just a lousy design decision.)

I won't argue against more customization. I will argue against calling certain minions "not heroic." We had this argument when side switching first came out on live. I've got a heroic necro MM. Thugs? Part of a gang who split off because they did not like what their buddies were doing and decided to protect people instead. Demons? Why not? Mercs? Private security. And MTeague covered how things could go the other way. So yeah. Customization - yes. As for what's heroic or not - that's a question of imagination.

So, just for the heck of it, I ran a mission and demorecorded it. One person, going from War Witch in Croatoa to a door mission (same zone,) regular difficulty, probably 10-15 minutes (hunting for a final hostage) - 260kb. Just running around Atlas park for about a minute, 10 people (including me,) one costume change, one of those people being a mastermind - 773kb. (Edit:) More for the heck of it. Me going into a small base, hitting demorecord, stopping right away. 14k. Same character, same base, going through all 10 costumes: 67k. (All 10 different.)

Here's the thing, too. A lot of people here, *regardless* of the rewards, are long time vets of the game. They've seen and done the low level content to death. Regardless of the rewards... they've *done* it, and many of them just want to get to the "fun" levels or top level to get a fully powered up character. Put in new low level content, they'll run it a time or two and head back up. Hell, my first 50 back in i3 took nearly 400 hours. Granted, this was a blaster, with a late-30s content gap and a lot more debt. Now, even though I tend to play through content and join groups, I tend to end up well shy of 100 hours. Again, that's *with playing the content.* I think I have one non-50 that's going to be over that, and she's an RP main with a group that's just done social stuff on several SG nights (versus going out and getting XP.) Plus, lookign at the selections... 1 - we already have people running 2XP. This seems to run counter to "get more people to play the content" since they'd just be speeding through it *even faster.* 2 - Ehh... I don't think they need to, honestly. Not double, at least. 3 - We have the WST for this, which seems to do just what you want to do - encourage people to play other content. 4 - I just have to disagree with this flat out. Many of the sub-40 recipes have an outsize impact. LOTG is sub 40. Performance shifter +end, KB protection, Panacea, etc - huge boosts. Having at least some of these rare is a small price to pay for this. 5 - is an assumption. Besides, "rare" doesn' tnecessarily mean "good," or even "will sell on the market for a lot."

Work weirdness, haven't updated. Sorry! So have a sand fire!

The flip side of that being - this is a guaranteed occurrence in the life of every VEAT (assuming it's not dropped by level 23.) Possibly a multiple-time occurrance if I'm remembering the respecs/multi build thing correctly. Versus... (and as someone who likes multiple builds, it pains me to say this) how many people actually have multi-branch multi-build VEATs? I mean, for me, as mentioned, it's a *dis*incentive to roll more of them... and I'm a raging altoholic. How many others have said "I don't want to do that again?"

The only answer to that is "It depends." As I'm recalling, a demorecord captures everything - so if as part of your gameplay you go through Atlas with a big costume contest going on, it says to grab Atlas, and then get the costumes of everyone in it. If you're doing gameplay in Praetoria solo and only see 2-3 other people, it would be smaller. That's from (somewhat hazy) memory, though. That said... I doubt we'd be talking gigabytes of space or anything. Several tens to hundreds of megabytes depending on how long and what was going on?

The funny thing about it? This is one of the reasons I used dual builds on live, at least for the widows (and trying a dedicated bane/huntsman.) I didn't want to deal with this, or many of the other things I don't care for (like the sucktastic storyline) about VEATs, any more than I had to. I'm remaking one of each here because I like the *characters,* not the AT itself for the most part. There are just *so many things* about them that annoy me. (Granted, a chunk of them are lore and "could have done this with them" storyline and ... world things that pretty much just bug me.) I seem to recall this kicking in *during respecs and dual builds* as well, actually, making *that* whole process longer. (Maybe it was just the dual build. It's been a while.) Mind you, I like multiple builds. I advocate for people to use them. But in this case... eh?

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." 🙂