Greycat

People using Kheldian (particularly PB) powers and playing as a non-Kheldian has been a thing since live. I've also done it the other way and had "fake Kheldians (typically Energy/Energy blasters and Gravity control characters) - usually either the result of Nictus experimentation, "force of will" or something else (it's a bit of a long story. 🙂 ) Including a mix - grav/energy dom.

OK, with testing I can answer two questions. 1. What happens if you use the empowerment table in squid form? Hopped into Squid. Went to table. Crafted lethal resistance. (PRovides 5% resist for an hour.) It didn't show up in combat attributes, but did show up in my powers. Dropped to human, it showed up in combat attributes. And what I was wondering: 2. Does the timer still count down until the end of the power while in form? Yes, it does. So if you craft the lethal resistance like I did (5%, again, not huge *there* though it would buff human and dwarf... actually let me check something.... nope, only resist buff in Dwarf is Dwarf.) and are in form for 45 of 60 minutes... you've wasted 75% of your buff since it counts down with no effect. ... also my flight speed is doing something odd, cycling a -.14ish to 14% negative, listed as "energy flight," every few seconds... huh. Anyway. Yes, if you're in form, you can craft the buffs, and if you stay in forms, they can expire with you getting zero benefit for the salvage cost.

First villainside 50 back in the day was an Energy/Energy Brute. That cloak made it fun, PVE and PVP (especially PVP, having "that stalker!" cussed out in broadcast. That and people repeatedly trying to TP Foe me... which Energy resisted every time.) Played that character like a heavy Stalker without then (then much heavier - COV release) reliance they had on AS and Placate. The OP mentions Clamor, so I'm wondering how high the Brute is - have you not gotten to take Energy Drain yet (28?) Or was it skipped? Because yes, as mentioned, it's really rather designed with taking it in mind.

OK, haven't added to this yet. Mostly working on renders I like when I have some time... Therra Arcson. First 50 on live, later turned into my first PB, first bit of art from Graver, all sorts of things. This little render in the sewers - well, she has shorter hair now, and I need to find round glasses. Anyway... (Current version - an Elec/Elec sentinel here - Daz render run through PS Elements "comic" filter. Just for something different.) That piece by Graver 13. He liked the result but hated doing that knotwork around the edges of the background. 🙂 And yes, I love this piece. Sketch, as well. Dagger flattened out her glasses a bit, which... I go back and forth on minding. But it works.

What gets me are the people complaining and saying it's stupid and wasting time to take 2-3 seconds at most to reposition... whether it's KB, a cone, whatever. Whenever I bring that up, you'd think I'd kicked their dog into their grandmother before running them both over with a truck or something. (Oh. And the bonfire thing earlier from the other person? Of *course* people loved putting the KB-KD IO in there. Unlike, say, Ice Slick, it also does damage. And fire control is all - well mostly - about the damage. Death is the ultimate debuff, after all.)

So, I like running the SSAs, generally. Easy merits once a week. When you finish one, you get a choice of four rewards. I just finished #1 on one of my characters, the 10-20 arc. What were the rewards? 1. 4x reward merits. Yay, 20 merits, at least if you haven't run it in 6 1/2 days roughly! 2. An Astral merit. But only if you're 50. 3. Threads. But only if you're 50. 4. One accuracy SO. And "Choose nothing." All right, so the rewards are all right. You're getting 5 merits regardless, and 20 if you haven't run it for about a week. This is probably the most popular option. If you're running this while leveling - you're not 50 yet - options 2 and 3 might as well not exist. That leaves... option 4. One Accuracy SO. Not even "Pick an SO." You're getting accuracy, and you're going to like it. We used to DREAM of living in a corridor, it would have been a palace to us... And at the level of the first two SSAs, that SO doesn't last very much. The reward at level 10-20 (and beyond, really) - since you're getting 5 merits anyway - is almost a worse option than picking "Choose nothing." These were released late enough in the game's life that an SO wasn't really a great reward *then* (and again, you don't even get to choose which one.) This should be changed. So, some options: 1. At the *very* least, pick the SO type. I mean, you get to pick one a week from the SSA. I doubt this will break the burgeoning market for SOs. 2. Go to the nearest usable level of common IO instead. Heck, even make it crafted. You might get a level 10 or 15 in that first SSA, sure, but at least it won't expire in 3 quickly-reached levels. 3. A combination of random salvage. Two common and an uncommon. OK, you're getting salvage while killing things (unless you're speeding through.) Some combination like that, I'm not dead set on the numbers. 4 Random "special salvage." Some tailor tickets, some AE tickets, a piece of Halloween salvage or candy cane out of season, even one of the "replacement piece" salvage for use in the PVP zones. 5 Some nifty temp power. A one-use hero/villain summon (like Sky Dragon or Shock Treatment.) Probably at boss strength, roughly like the PPD/Arachnos reinforcement, not the Phalanx summons. (You can get multiple charges, but it would take multiple weeks.) Or some new temp power related to the SSA you played - for SSA 1, a mini obelisk that taunts the Circle specifically, for instance. (Or something else.) Regardless, the one SO ("and only of this type, and you're going to LIKE it, you!") is ... kind of weak and not up to the other rewards. (Some of this could also be applied to the Sirens Call rewards post as well, actually.)

Pfft. The sets don't have to be 15 years old for that. When the live devs wanted to revamp villain patron pools and we saw what they did on live (well, live beta) with replacing powers "that weren't popular" or "nobody took," the pitchforks and boiling tar came out. Thus we got power pools with *five* powers instead of four.

You know, I don't think I ever tried the empowerment buffs. Yeah, since these have a salvage cost and a time... Does the timer keep running down on them or are they paused? I should check... anyway, yeah, those should be active in forms. They are similar to - let's say very long duration enhancements that way, in that you are using up a resource (yes, you get salvage and insps back, but can't exactly guarantee you get the same stuff.) Leadership powers have been asked for. I don't know if there's a technical reason we don't have that working or not - I mean, you can't change or edit costumes when shapeshifted, either. I suspect that's a technical rather than lore or ... "executive decision" reason, but obviously I don't know. (Also, yeah, technically secondary mutation *shouldn't* work - you're a remembered energy form in nova or dwarf, not something biological to mutate...)

Just so you know... the winter pack price (as well as the heroes and villains / rogues and vigs packs) are not set to that price by the players. As far as the winter IOs? Looking at WInter's Bite, the supply is in the single digits, the bids in the hundreds. Same as I'm looking at frozen blast. People are *listing* that high because other people will *buy* them at that (not all, obviously, with 100+ bids sitting there.) I'm not sure if these drop at all. The packs are meant to be INF sinks, to begin with, so don't expect that to change much. Though they are higher than the other packs. The IOs? Maybe they need to be a drop to ease that supply problem. Because those are some fairly lopsided numbers.

It was suggested to open one room up a bit. Room 1 is "open sky," but with interior lighting. As a sort of map - the base is laid out (mostly) in a cross. N goes to transport - hero, coop and villain. Stage 1 is south - open sky. Stage 2 is East - closed, catwalk (ish) . Stage 3 is west - plain, basic stage and central winners/judges/whatever platform. (Seriously. Only decoration in this room is the number 3.) Edit: Also for those last minute "Gah, I didn't fix that color," Icon and Facemaker representatives have been confined convinced to donate time to help out. Plus there are two ATMs.

Exemplaring doesn't care about when the slots were placed, just the level you took the power at.

Croatoa ends at about 35, so he should be 30-35. (Gordon Bower and SKipper Legrange are the first two, 25-30, then Kelly Nemmers and Buck open up at 30.)

Just since it seems costume contests always run into the sun not being up in Atlas and affecting colors and the like... Very non-fancy base available. Three stages which should be enough for most contests, as well as travel to both sides (and co-op.) One's a plain stage, one has a bit of a catwalk, one has a stand for whatever you want to use it for, all have tiered stages around the edges for contestants. Stages-13625. Let your contestants be seen the way they were meant to. (I'm not a fancy base builder. But this doesn't really need it.)

... welp. Just crashed on the female reptilian going into SG settings (double checking a base code.) Saw the motd, hit next, crashed. Going to change from that costume, obviously. 🙂 Picked another random character, went through the settings just fine. (Non-reptilian skin/texture.)

I leave India.

... two mind/kin 'trollers and a mind/ dom? Controllers speed boost each other and the dom and just keep things rolling? Bit of tactics from Leadership to help with hitting, perhaps...

As I recall, the issue isn't "shouldn't be allowed" but "can't be done," due to how the character is set up. You can't change AT, primary, secondary or origin - they're baked into a character. Everything else is fair game. But yeah. 1000 slots. Go nuts.

Please don't buff titan weapons inappropriately. This is supposedly a family friendly game.

We have at least one map in space now, and hasten does indeed happen in a vacuum! 🙂

Here's the thing.... You don't have to. Why are you CMing a tank, barring some extreme situation? They don't need it. Most melees don't. Save it for other squishies - and even all of *them* won't need it. Most of my teams, I'm seeing... 3-4 people, max, that need that. Fort? Be picky. *Especially* in the current IO-heavy game. I combat buff the auras (no "Everyone stop what you're doing and gather around!" breaking the flow of a mission) and that's generally fine. Pay attention to your team and you'll save yourself some work. As for the OP, I'm not particularly fond of the 'bonding' thing. I can make a judgement of the moment with the current absorb pain - is it worth the cost and risk to me right now and for the next few moments, yes or no. (I will say it would be an interesting mechanic... elsewhere. Bodyguard, basically. I don't know how technically tough or game-wise desirable it would be to echo auras like that.) That said, AP is *not* a cornerstone power in Empathy. It's easily skippable. I'm also not fond of the auras becoming toggles, quite frankly. The recovery aura seems especially like it would be fighting itself - especially solo (I tend to do two builds, one team, one solo.) About the only change I'd honestly go with is the ability to "heal" a bit of absorb onto people, within limits. Revitalize being a buff as well as heal would be... interesting. It would partially solve the issue of "wasted" rezzes - though I'd still like a fast recharge if the target ignores it or hits the base/hospital instead. (That's just an annoyance...) Other than that... in part it sounds like you really want Pain Domination with tweaks. I, personally, don't think I'd want my emps' playstyles to change as drastically as some of this would do. But again, I wouldn't object to some of the changes being looked at, as mentioned above.

While remote base access maybe cut off, you can still get to the portal and use the code. Mind you, I"m not against the suggestion - just pointing that out. (I'm not sure I'd want it in *every* zone. Several would be good. Not really against it either. )

Sounds like a plan.

Based on a small sample set, I think they drop too infrequently. The rate should be at least doubled.

So this is minor but annoying. I'll craft IOs - common or set - ahead of time sometimes and stick them in base storage. When retrieving multiples, the order will "flip" (if it were in a spreadsheet, for instance, you'd be going from ascending to descending.) It seems exceptionally random when it happens. Click speed doesn't seem to matter, I'll click (say) two accuracy, suddenly it's flipped order and there's a hold where I'm clicking. If I look at the order, it's definitely reversed itself - stuff at the top is now at the bottom. It doesn't matter who put the enhs in or when - the instance that this happened that got me to finally put this in was me retrieving some IOs on the same character that *created* them and put them all in at the same time. It will do it partway through a stack, so it's not just "that one ran out and it refreshed." This is *really* annoying when it happens.

I am curious where this "Powers were balanced around having hasten" popped up from, myself, as I've been hearing it more and more and frankly my face is sore from all the facepalming.