Erydanus

The slow Win 7 reading of the character list started around the time the queue code was added. If I'm waiting on the character list to load and I try to back out it actually says "do you want to lose your place in the queue" still. Actually before I took a break for the summer one of the devs had found that mention noteworthy and was going to follow up with a couple of us who were discussing this in another thread after checking into something, but I never got a ping about it. Yes, W7 is EOL but I'm not planning to upgrade my gaming machine to Win 10. Ah, and I found the original/main thread on this topic:

I have had a similar experience but I assume it is nothing more than the massive amount of power effects and various other graphic fun going on overloading my system and conking me out. If you're in the kind of leagues for TOT that I have been, it's near Rikti Mothership raid levels of participation, but with many more diverse effects going on from the multitude of different mobs spawning and all the Halloween costume elements, not to mention zone ambience and possibly events running. Your first step should be to lower your graphic settings to a performance level or even outright low during setting TOT Raids and see if it changes things. If it cuts down on your crashes, you know the root cause.

So wait that means that the pets "absorption received" would be capped at their own base HP as well?

I'd like to thank you guys for catching this bug. I'm not surprised it happened - Singy uses a different version of the controller powers. They do double the damage of a controller version, but don't benefit from containment.

I always thought we heard a lot about Ill/Rad because people enjoy Ill but it is sorely lacking in direct controls. Rad takes care of that with a strong buff/debuff game paired with bonus holds. In truth it works well with just about anything. My main on live was Gravity/Radiation. Thematically it worked well for me and in terms of controls it was simply insane. I'd drop my anchors on some guy and then scoop half the room up with wormhole and shoot everyone into a corner where they'd all be affected by them, then pin them in place with gravity's immobilize. Rad is such a strong set for a soloing controller to. There are so many tricks you can do with it. Anchor pulling with Radiation Infection for instance. Drop it on a guy and run around a corner, he comes after you and the anchor aggros his buddies. Suddenly 3 or 4 skulls spread out in a warehouse come around a corner in a clump, shooting at you and missing because the anchor has debuffed them.

Croax really nailed it well. If you are leveling solo, I think it has increased value because sometimes you do need that panic button and to peel a particularly bad foe off you. Maybe to flee, not to AS them even. Get familiar with the ATOs. ATOs are not a level 50 only thing - they're attuned. You can be using them from level 10 if you like - at least the 2 procs. Though I have to add in a mention that on dual blades, Placate is part of some of the combos so it's a whole different situation on that powerset.

Ninjitsu was an original Stalker secondary. It was made for the launch playstyle and is not optimal now because of meta/playstyle changes and ATOs. (Not optimal means it's functional but is down several notches from when it was new. People seem to get defensive about this type of comment so I want to be clear.) In propagating it to scrappers, hide, caltrops, and smoke flash were replaced. The set gained a a self damage boost and knockback protection power; an end recovery power; and an extra defense + run and jump buff toggle with basic stealth powers, making it massively better in my opinion. Ergo, the Claws/Ninjitsu build would be better on a scrapper by a significant margin. Even if you wanted the stealthy element as a theme there's a basic stealth power not equivalent to hide right there in the set. I mean, now I'm thinking of rolling an alt... I've rolled an alt and it seems really good in DFB levels. I think that +end power is going to be real handy too. By the way Frostweaver I think you misunderstood the OPs comment about theme. They said a Widow would have been off their character theme not that there were scrapper/stalker thematic differences.

My original stalker was martial arts/ninjitsu. This was before MA got adjusted and cobra strike - the stun - was real low level. This is way back before several mechanic changes happened, so being able to stun a guy, or use an extra placate to run and go back into hide was really desirable. The sets synergized nicely for that kind of Stalker 1.0 playstyle. But, with the changes to mechanics and the archetype ATOs, I feel like both of those sets are in "functional but not great" places now. Super Reflexes similarly is kind of a dated set. It works, but you need every darn power thus is quite late blooming, whereas newer sets like Willpower are up and running earlier. Thus overall I think your build will be ok at 50, but it may be a bit of a slog. Therefore, I would ABSOLUTELY make a priority getting the two proc ATOs, one resets build up, the other is a chance of hide. Standard ATOs are attuned out of the box, don't even worry about them being in sets just them and jam them into your build. The one that is a chance of hide you can either put into your assassin's strike for a chance of re-hide, or just put that in whatever attack you use the most though that means you might hide and when you want to use AS you'll use the slower/high damage version. (This is what I did and I'm still on the fence of if I want to move the ATO to AS.) The other one can go into any of your stalker attack powers and all of your archetype attacks have a chance of resetting build up. So, use buildup whenever it resets! That'll help your damage a lot.

As far as I last knew the tailor/facemaker you can place in the base are standard tailors only. You need a plastic surgeon/body sculptor - and they're labeled that way - to do body changes. The plastic surgeon is in the back and on the right in both Icons and Facemaker shops. Something that can be very helpful if you have to change your body and the sliders is to save your current costume while in the plastic surgeon. It's a normal costume file but it'll have the new slider info in it so if you load it while at the surgeon's it will update the body sliders not just the costume bits. If you don't have a bunch of custom costumes and you're low level you could just load that file onto all your starter slots just to update them all right then. This is handy in case you did something like came out of chargen and realized you forgot to make your character extra tall like you planned but haven't gotten into much design work yet. Now if you're changing your sliders after you have made costumes you can just edit the costume files to match the new sliders. In fact if you're playing a villain epic AT your first slot will be special using the NPC system and slots 2 and on will be set to a generic default and once you update slot 2 ... you have to manually copy your look to all of them. That means that if you adjusted your height and build on slot one as a widow/huntsman, you'll have an appearance mismatch to all your other slots unless you load those parameters onto slot 2, then update it with your intended default appearance look and then copy and upload it to all the other slots. (Yes it's a pain it's the price of being a VEAT and at least it's free if you do it right after you chargen). Now if you try to load the NPC look of slot one where you are in a widow or huntsman outfit onto another slot you'll get an error message, but it will copy the sliders over. So what you want to do is copy slot 1 to slot 2, update the look, and then copy slot 2 to all the rest immediately to forcibly reset them. Also, if you've already got costumes in various slots what you can do is save each to its own costume file and then directly edit it. Save each specific costume look to its own file naming them something easy like MyCharFredSlot2.costume and so on. Then open up whichever .costume file has the new, updated body slider info in notepad (you can just tack .txt onto the end of the file name temporarily to make that easy); at the very top will be the body slider info, it'll look like this: { Scale 3.518 BoneScale 0.1362 ShoulderScale 0.06809 ChestScale 0.08511 ETC ETC ETC SkinColor 255, 178, 155 <--- LAST LINE TO COPY I think NumParts 28 CostumePart "" <--- this line is actually the beginning of the chest costume details { Geometry Tight Texture1 !X_Hips_ArmoredSuit_01 Texture2 !N_Hips_ArmoredBodysuit_01_DC As you can see from the sample above the relevant numbers end with a skin color line and then it goes into the actual costume parts. The Geometry tight bit you see at the end of my example is actually the beginning of my character's chest costume. So, what you do is just copy scale through skin color and paste it over the equivalent lines of each of the other files and then load them onto their original slots at a plastic surgeon. Naturally since you're editing files it's best to save the changed file as a new name like MyCharFredSlot2REV.costume, just in case you don't select quite right when you copy paste. This is a nice way to make sure you're getting exactly the same sliders on all your costumes.

Now that snipes can be fast-cast, suppose something's running away from you? BAM! snipe them as they flee.

Wow you are SO LATE to respond to this. Before answering a 2 month old thread you should read the rest of it next time. Anyway, you were completely wrong with your answer. His domain registration hadn't properly propagated. It's been fixed since then.

I would recommend you not play Regen, play Willpower instead. It also is lacking a +recovery power due to hide, but as a more modern set it has a good layering of bits of defense and resistance and is quite solid paired with Psi-Melee. I just think of Willpower as Regeneration 2.0 at this point.

Honestly the easiest thing to solo with is a Stalker. If Brutes and Scrappers are the A-rank for soloing then Stalkers are S-rank. This mission only requires killing the boss and his guards in the last room of the mission? Sure just sprint there and be done in 2 minutes and on to the next mission. Unless it's Knives of Artemis (level 46+) nobody will see you. This mission only has low-value minions? Skip them. This mission has a lot of high-value lieutenants & bosses? Assassinate them. Run on x2 so you get the lts and bosses, but go to x1 for defeat-alls. You'll never have a problem traveling anywhere other than zones with special hazards like First Ward. Even elite bosses are pretty easy. Just stand behind them, eat several inspirations, hit build up and use Assassin's Strike. Start the fight with their hp already reduced 33% or more.

The Hollows revamp was very popular on live when it happened. A lot of people really went nuts on those repeatable missions Meg gives you. No the spawns are no longer set up to be 50% higher than the standard for a hazard zone is, they're now only about 2-3x what a normal city zone should have. They are chopped up into many small patches which means finding the right ones is tougher since War Witch moved the mobs around a lot. You still get introduced to David Wincott if you walk up to the City Hall contacts and do their classic starting missions. You also can get him through the find a contact function. Bottom line, if you want to do the Hollows you can, and the Merit payout is VERY HIGH and worth doing.

Only if your definition is play must be fast. Lots of people enjoy a slower paced but safer combat. Defenders solo even get a 30% damage buff (they're normally team support so they get a little buff for themselves when alone). I personally enjoy soloing Controllers though I admit in the mid-20s it gets to be a real slog because by then their lower damage is really more apparent and they don't have their pet yet. But it's do-able.

I feel like this illustrates an issue with myopia in a lot of builds and theorycrafting. You focus on tuning this one power but ignore the overall build or playstyle or bigger ramifications. Zolgar's example basically illustrates this. It seems balanced that the chance of proccing lowers with the increase to recharge but it's made up for being able to spam the power more times. HOWEVER that's only balanced for THAT power and only if it actually gets used that many times. If another power gets a lot of recharge - say it's just how the set being used in it is configured - but the power is only used once in a while then you can argue that proc chance got nerfed not normalized. I'm not sure it really matters as long as the power you're actually using has a lot of activations but I can see the point. (It's a pity but maybe what would be more balanced is if every proc had its own internal cooldown or diminishing chance to fire with actual activations within a certain timeframe but that's just not how it's coded.) Anyway I generally just am irritated a lot by these changes and I am going to go shake my cane at some clouds now.

I feel like pylon calling is completely pointless. When we were originally doing raids we didn't have leagues so one team would be starting the raid. Calling pylon order in broadcast helped anyone else who was tagging along but it wasn't necessary. One team is all that's necessary to start a raid. When you have a full league it'd be much better to assign each team about 3 pylons to go after or else just sic the whole league on one starting pylon and have it zerg in one direction and meet at the designated last pylon. Organizing pylon order is totally overkill. Now, grates? I can agree those should ideally be assigned just to make sure every team gets one, even if it's just each team leader grabs a fresh one and their team meets on them. I have actually been on raids where, thanks to lag and people moving out of sync and jumping right to the center, multiple bombs were not set.

I have a psi-melee stalker and I was actually thinking Cognitive just because it's an extension of exactly what his powers are and I like to stay "on theme" as much as possible. (He actually has a confuse power, and psionic dots are in his melee attacks but not all the time). However, I had to consider would diversifying a damage type be a better choice? Still, it's only PVE...

Honestly just get yourself some level 25 or 30 generic IOs and use them as if they were the SOs you remember - they basically are, but they don't expire. Invention sets have bonuses but they are really not essential. They're a nice way to minmax if you care to do so and there are a few that give you a special property that are really nice to have - like the ones that grant you just enough knockback protection you can ignore all knockdown attacks. But don't put yourself through the hassle and hardship of just using drops. Sell your drops, either craft your own IOs or buy them on the auction house. Crafting system is very simple and you can do a tutorial at the university and get 1 free.

* When I was testing the prestige enhancement IOs on Zombie Horde I was level 5 going to level 6. There is no issue with the procs failing for level up. * I was also able to reproduce the behavior on the test server with a level 5 character. After verifying the knockdown proc was working I leveled the character to 6, dismissed the zombie, trained up, summoned 2 new zombies and confirmed procs had stopped working. * I dismissed and resummoned the zombies in every case where the slotting was changed. That includes when I dinged 5, trained to 6. Also when I dismissed the zombies, deleted the enhancements and resummoned. StrikerFox you've got this parser set up already - would you mind taking a few minutes to reproduce my tests? Test a Zombie Horde at level 5 (1 zombie) with a couple procs, level to 6, dismiss and resummon, and validate? I'm not just interested in the procs firing, but also the damage enhancements just shutting off too. Also on the test server I tried the same tricks using the Overwhelming Force damage proc - but it worked on everything. So it's entirely possible that it's just these enhancements that are specifically bugged but I'd like to know. Due to local high heat and no air conditioning in my computer room I haven't been able to play for about a week now. :(

Apparently the font is a mag 2 stun pbaoe that also does like, 10 damage to whatever mob its sitting on top of.

Honestly cleaning up the dregs is a perfect job for the single target ranged attack in the epic pool. No need to run over there and shank that last minion I just hit him with 1 or 2 blasts of shuriken while I'm already on the move.

The stalker ATOs have a reset buildup proc. It happens very routinely for me, and there's 20% tohit before you even start enhancing the power for tohit.

Please clarify: are you being shot INSIDE the hospital or in its outdoor vicinity? The former - well, that's a bug since the rooms of the hospital are physically located below the zone and the npc shouldn't be able to shoot through the ground. Like I'd file a ticket if it happens so the GMs can come, find the mob and find out why it's "off its loop". If you're being shot as you leave the hospital I suggest you talk to the nurse, purchase 4 small defense inspirations and eat them all before leaving and then move as fast as you can.

Mass Confusion having 60% accuracy and a crazy long recharge means it was hit with the nerf stick when ALL the controller AoE holds and stuns were en masse. Dumb choice but there you have it, they nerfed it like it was Total Domination. That the plant and electric sets have AoE confuses means the developers who created those power sets didn't treat them like holds (notice that AoE sleeps and fears weren't nerfed in this way). I'm honestly surprised it didn't get changed ... but then there was a contingent of people who thought it should be removed from Mind Control and a pet created to take its place. A pet ... just like the one Penelope Yin has.