Greycat

I found the AOE splash buffs kind of annoying when they came out, honestly, but eh, they're here regardless of my preferences. (They made playing a Bot/FF MM even *more* boring, if that was possible...) That said, I don't think CM would get that - I don't think ID from Kinetics did, either, when SB got turned into an AOE. I *suspect* (purely guesswork) it's because it's status protection. Unlike shields (which still have a chance to hit,) status protection just lets players ignore most control effects - which can be fairly powerful. My *guess* is that that'll be what keeps it a single-target buff. (Granted it doesn't take long to recharge.)

Since we can't customize this, I'd think the way to do this would be having a different power without the FX. The characters I have that use powerslide use it for the specific FX.

... what've you got for a background? Got myself a Les Paul MUSE in Arctic White recently, so...

You know, I don't remember seeing Hammond pop up even on live near the end. Then again, it's been a long time...

For all the "inf nerf" talk, I'm actually more interested in (and amused by) jump pack/steam jump being disabled in the arena. Mind you, I haven't played an arena match since waaaaaaaaay before shutdown. Wondering if this fixes something or was just missed earlier.

You can do everything without any individual AT. The game was built without the "Holy Trinity" being needed. I can run the entire game 1-50 just fine without the blaster you praise from your other example ever showing up. I'm not roadblocked or unable to finish anything. There's been arguments about tanks, scrappers and brutes stepping on each other. You want to build up your armors first and have them more functional? Take a tank. You want crits? Scrapper. You like the fury mechanic? Brute. Different gameplay styles. None are "useless." They have different focuses. Defender vs Corrupter. Do you want to build your support powersets first and focus on that first? Defender. Damage more with a support flavor? Corrupter. And so on. It sounds like you're solely interested in the min/maxed characters, considering everything else "useless." The game's not designed around that. And shouldn't be.

Aren't they generally in "Find contact?" I'm fairly sure at least Jim Temblor is. I'd have to check on WIncott. Other than that (and DA and RWZ,) I can't think of any real "hazard zone" contacts other than the security chiefs that send you on hunts. That said, they can certainly get buried under new contacts and they're not as *obvious* as they were (Twinshot pops up, I don't remember seeing anything like that for Wincott off the top of my head.)

This is not "kindness." This is acknowledging you share the game with other people. Not everyone cares that they're min-maxed doing 9000 DPS and the entire map falls down dead when they walk in. And where did I ever say "Don't do a good build?" Again, no AT is useless. If you want to talk about individual sets feeling underpowered at various stages, that's a different conversation. But an AT is not a powerset, and part of the fun of the game is seeing how different primaries and secondaries interact and how that changes how you approach the game.

I don't know how much that would help in the OP's case, since they're ... sort of all over. The First/Night ward contacts could be argued to not be "gold" since they're post-20 (despite being in Praetoria. The zones are a bit odd.) Or on the flip side, they'd be legitimately gold and blue or gold and red, for instance. Maybe expanding the list into an actual *list,* or giving options for "in this zone," or something, on top of the "Do not show again" check?

Excuse me? I disagree with the OP from the very first sentence of Mind being on the "weak" side of Control. You consider that a waste of time? I played mind *heavily* on live and am working some Minds up here. About the *only* thing I can agree with is that TK is situational and often skippable. Yes, Plant gets a confuse power - that causes aggro. Tradeoff for getting it earlier, and they only get one. (I'll point out Plant also gets a sleep.) And +Mag to confuse a boss - if you want that, run a dom. If I want solid *control,* I go with mind. If I want control with various debuffs (or placed patches) I go with other sets, all the way to little control, lots of chaos and hey, two invisibilities, there's Illusion.

So you actually don't have an argument and want to insult people that acutally play it. Nice to see the conversation's not worthwhile this fast so I don't waste my time.

Because they are other players who enjoy those characters and this is often a social game. And again, no AT is useless.

Just a solid no. Sleeps are far more useful than people give them credit for. Aim a sleep at anything throwing a dispersion bubble. Watch a sleep shut down an AV. Mind is insanely (heh) flexible and useful.

No AT is useless. And what's a "Healer?"

Other than in Drowning in Blood. Personally, I'd rather we see the hazard zones get content - and content that leaves a thread that can be revisited in an Incarnate-level map, instead of taking the zones away from those at that level range. (And honestly, redside needs more to go through, but that's a little more intensive work to create from scratch.) I'd actually kind of hoped that was what would happen with DA on live. Get some "teasers" and content saying "SOmething's happening" that you visit in your 20s, maybe a contact throws you back there from 35=45 to update it, then you get the IncarnateAstoria.

Heh. Just thinking about this and what I'd want in a character select screen. (Because of course I was, since I was trying to fall asleep.) Personally, the things I'd like to see: Level / Level Range Filter side. Yes, you can see the icons, but knowing I want to play redside, for instance, it would be nice to have just those (or those plus grey) show up. RP / PVP / Farmer. Because why not let you tag some of your own characters. Heck, custom tags would be nice, but probably ridiculously more work than I'd think. Supergroup name. Not sure if this is able to be "seen" at the character select screen level, but... AT.

Mmm. I'm going to admit part of my bias towards "too easy" is from having played it since I3. There's little that surprises me. Most of the "hard" is more... *annoying* than actually hard, like the Land of Endless Ambushes. That said, there's been incredible power creep in the game. IOs are to blame, in part, for taking the game from "You can perma this with a Kinetic character's help, and defense? Well, thank your FF defender" to "Meh, my blaster's at the defense and damage caps when I'm in walk." And yes, higher level, to the way Incarnates were handled - I would've loved to see Alpha be the only thing at full strength through all content, everything else be available but weaker in normal content. Instead, ITF's gone from being "OK, rommy's going to be a hard fight, and the ambushes - we'll have to stick together" to "Who has 10 minutes to run an ITF? Eh, I have 15, I'll just solo it." For that matter - and I've said this before, too, and know I'm in a minority - I think T9s should still have a crash (but should be strong enough to be worth taking in return, just require assessing a situation before using.) And that everything from Hasten to Domination shouldn't be perma-able without outside help. All of those changes, to me, have made the game trivially easy. Yes, with "a little investment," but it's not that much, really - mostly a case of being willing to learn. For my part, I don't really bother in most cases. Yes, eventually I'll be IO'd out, might even have some purples, but I don't bother optimizing things, I take what looks interesting. I don't care if I'm not running +4X8 - I don't generally find that interesting. Right now, for me, the game's an escape and a RP avenue. I find creating *characters* and stories interesting. The rest of the game, at this point, I just take however it is.

Stuffed in a Fractal Design Focus-G: Asus Prime X370 Pro Ryzen 7 1700, stock cooler. GeForce GTX 1080, 8 Gb 32 Gb RAM 250 Gb Samsung M.2 SSD boot drive 2x2 Tb Firecuda drives for games, storage, etc. DVD-RW (and it's a pain finding cases with an optical drive bay these days.) 2x27" 1920x1080 AOC monitors. Stuck in a wireless card of some flavor or other. (TPLink 802.11ac internal card. No USB dongles.) I've somehow gone from Logitech to Razer KB and mouse. And while I thought it was kind of silly or useless at first, being able to do colored regions on the keyboard for some individual games has been kind of nice. (Keep forgetting what is doing what in MWO for some of the lesser used keys.) Honestly not *thrilled* with the firecuda drives, considering replacing them with larger WD Blacks or standard Barracudas. (They're hybrids.) Since it's been a few years, I may look into updating the processor. RAM's fine. Considering an RTX card, as well - possibly as a secondary to help with rendering things, actually. Just don't want to drop the cash on it at the moment.

Yeah, I think when I go Soldier, I end up going huntsman. I just *really* don't like the story arcs. I run them through 10 to get a costume change, then ignore them - playing them live nearly made me delete the characters, I was so irritated by them. (I'm also really not a fan of the must-respec-at-24 thing, especially if I'm going huntsman.) They can be survivable, sure. Even enjoyable. I had a few on live, I'm remaking a couple here. (Admittedly mostly from liking the characters. Crab was kind of underwhelming at times.) I just *don't* like the storyarcs... unlike my Khelds, where I try to run them on most of my PBs and WS.

Start off with this: Deadly Diana. The character that got me to love masterminds. And yes, "Dirty Diana" was what inspired her - having her "crew" get work as roadies and either ripping off or blackmailing shows that came through, eventually getting in with The Family. Old: Semaj007 and a sketch by... think he goes by Daggerfall, it's been a while. New? Render in Daz. With her arsonist and a ... not very visible enforcer.

So. Back on live, I was a bit of an art "collector." I'd take advantage of pretty much any opportunity to get a piece done of a character or two. These days... I mostly play with Daz studio (no, I'm not great at it, no, not taking commissions,) though I do get that itch from time to time. Sadly some of the artists that were "go-to" for me don't seem to be around (still don't know what happened to Taclobanon on Deviantart, or Graver, for that matter.) Still, I thought it might be interesting (eh, to me at least!) to do some old/new stuff, when I have it - an old piece, and maybe something I've messed with and rendered. Artist credit where I remember it. >.< (I'll try, really!) Updated - probably infrequently. Edit: Should probably make clear I was talking about my stuff... 🙂

Why? It's fun. Also, as far as having/not having the +5 level powers when exemped, about the only place I wish that hadn't happened was the PVP zones. I liked the lower level zones (since it wasn't just a Tier9-a-thon.) It was already a bit of a stretch when a lvl 15 fought a 25, even with both being set to 25 - just from number of powers and slotting - even without a 30+ coming in with yet more powers. And it opened up primary set T9s in Siren's, which made it less fun to me. (Then again, so did making it a battle of how much you dumped on IOs.) But, again. Ship's sailed.

What makes you think RPers can't or don't build for functional characters? (Or at worst take advantage of dual builds?) 🙂

Yeah. You need to run through his related content again and see what's actually happened to him, lore-wise. There's a reason he is the way he is. He's not a quisling.

... apparently can't trim smileys. Huh. And yeah, there's no "probably" here. We have "scaling" mobs during events and... they don't scale. Rikti invasion in Kings Row? Better hope there are high level characters around. Your level 7 doesn't stand a chance.