Erratic1

There are certainly ways to deal with the endurance cravings Radiation Melee or Dark Armor provoke and certainly looking at either's thematically paired set is a good idea (nevermind my absolute refusal to ever have thematically paired primary/secondary powersets). But if someone really wanted to play Radiaton Melee/Dark Armor.... Remember Ross Perot? You need to think about the following line said with his voice: There will be a giant sucking sound.

It shouldn't be glass cannon. It is a hybrid set. You build for F/C/E/N Defense and S/L Resistance and back that with powers which augment your regeneration, recovery, and absorption. You do not get DDR, so need to be careful when engaging things which debuff Defense, particularly if those things deal in F/C/E/N damage, but on the upside you pretty well laugh at Endurance drain and Recharge and Movement debuffs. I suspect people having problem surviving with Bio come down to one of three things: They do not appreciate the hybrid nature of the set They do not know when to use their non-toggle powers The want to be in Offensive stance (which imposes a resistance penalty) all the time, particularly if either of the above points is in play. You have three stances you can be in--Defensive, Efficient, and Offensive. This gives you flexibility to adjust to deal with the situation you are facing. Or....you can build around one stance and never switch, which is what I do on my SS/Bio brute, who lives in Efficient stance, never runs out of endurance, and so is only limited by his ability to survive what is hitting him (not exactly a problem). Beyond that, you have three non-toggle powers: an absorption shield combined with a regen buff, a heal combined with endurance regain and recovery boost, and an Absorb/Regen/Recovery booster which debuffs enemy damage. Given scrappers do not reach the same resistance cap as Brutes/Tankers, your strategy for using these powers may be a bit different than what I do on my brute. I can see the merits to popping your absorption shield before running into groups so you can whittle down the group to manageable numbers before the shield fails and you are relying on your combination of resistance/defense whereas on my brute I tend to only pop the power once something has started to work his health down. I will say you should probably adopt the following situational check: Am I surrounded by six or more enemies? Activate Parasitic Aura. I find that prevents sudden onset dirt naps.

Radiation Melee and Dark Armor glance at each other, then say simultaneously, "Hold my beer."

Tankers (along with Blasters, Brutes, Scrappers, and Stalkers) the lowest values across all of the Leadership powers compared to other ATs.

A costume evolution for my blaster, Bronze Magus: My brute Ultrapower started with a costume paying homage to his inspiration, evolved a costume more distinctly his while retaining the colors of the original. And now, somewhat following what happened to the comics character that inspired him, has a costume representing him as an older teen:

My characters which take the Experimentation pool are looking at two powers: Speed of Sound and Adrenal Booster. Any other power is had simply to have access to Adrenal Booster as it requires two previous powers in the pool to access. Like Boxing and Kick in the Fighting pool, whichever power you take to enable Adrenal Booster is there to meet requirement and only slotted if there are set bonus reasons to do so. As example, my Elec/Ice blaster is themed as a speedster, hence Speed of Sound. With perma-Hasten and Agility Core Paragon his build should have Adrenal Booster up for 60s out of every 156s, nearly 40% of the time.

Invulnerability

Probably better to say Defense sets are better for a scrapper since their resistances are capped at 75%. Brutes cap at 90% resistance so are agnostic in regards to Defense sets vs Resistance sets. If maximum damage is your thing, then go Scrapper. If survival, while putting out good damage is more your kick, go Brute, but realize that while they have a higher resistance cap than scrappers, you have to work to reach it (at least on your own). Hmmm...I really need to remake my SS/EA brute from Live at some point.

Marvel's Black, White, and Blood titles apparently are influencing me. I would say the left costume for a more, "I will hurt you only enough to stop you" feel, and the right costume for a more, "I don't care how much you end up hurting" feel. Nightclaw.costume

Definitely not saying it is a wise thing to do, but here is an idea:

Most people provide a reason for wanting a spot to be saved and the actual wording, "Save me a spot" is not used, in my experience. The two reasons I come across are: Needing to swap to another character. Most people will note they are doing so. My typical form of dealing with this when I need to change is, "Swapping to another character, name will be <X>"--lets the person know I intend to join them and who to expect a tell from so they know it is me. They are in a mission and want to go without having to abandon the mission (usually implied by a "Let me finish this mission"). I personally only do this when I am facing the last or second less spawn in a mission. Otherwise I will say, "Exiting mission" to let the person recruiting know that I need the minimal amount of time it will take me to either find the door or Ouro out of a mission so they can invite. I join far more TFs than I start but I do start some number of TFs. My tactic for holding spots are: Decrease the counter in the ongoing announcements which indicate how many I am recruiting for. If my most recent announcement in LFG was along the lines of, "Manticore TF, LF5M, level 30+" then after having had one of the above requests I will immediately announce, "Manticore TF, LF4M, level 30+" If someone has indicated they are finishing a mission, the group is nearing full, and I still have not heard from them, I will ask, "How close are you to being ready?" If someone has indicated they are swapping characters but I have not received a message from them they have swapped I will attempt to message the original character. Do not do a completion message until I have a full eight people on the TF (unless I have issued a Final Call message and it has been a minute). Things might be different were I organizing a raid's worth of people. But a TF is easy enough for me to keep up with commits and joins that I am fairly relaxed and accommodating, especially while still gathering people.

Artists not being valued during their lives then being well-regarded after passing is a popular trope though I am not sure how generally true it is. Most artist are widely unknown and remain widely unknown.

A lot of your trivial is doing stuff I do not enjoy. I have nothing against AE farmers but farming, to me, is more boring than watching paint dry. And that before we talk second accounting to help powerlevel my characters while I farm as what I enjoy is doing the missions and playing up the character. You have already admitted in this thread to seeing the game from only one vantage point. People play the game for a variety of reasons. This is a good thing. That they do not follow your path may be inefficient but there is no reason a priori your method being easy means every other method should bear an increase in difficulty.

I am not sure why I would want to emulate that aspect of real life in a game. I am not saying things should be trivial to achieve but likewise, I play a game for fun, not to toil away at like a job. Why am I not playing Lost Ark? It became too much like a job.

Picasso did a lot of things and worked in half a dozen different styles. Picasso at age 16: Picasso at age 22: Picasso at age 29: Picasso at age 30: Picasso at age 58: Eye of the beholder though. It may all be junk to you. 🙂

Or quit the game in frustration.

Did Picasso do Impressionism?

My level 28 Dom, whom I mostly did not play this past week because AH prices for low level recipes was understandably high, has 2 Aethers. So too does my 50 Brute who I played considerably more, so yeah, she probably got a bit lucky. My level 37 baby Brute, whom I probably played 2-3 times as much as the Dom has 1 Aether. And one character played (44 brute) a bit less than baby Brute with no Aether drops. As is the way of things, I do not overly care about the locked costumes so of course they dropped for me. Still, half of the 10 you would need for an unlock from a week of playing. At that rate I would have two unlocked costumes in a month? Or let's say I have been running high and should expect half that many. A costume unlock a month?

Don't both have a cone and both have an AoE? Looks like the radius is bigger for both on Energy Melee (and wider cone) and StJ hits harder with Combo levels.

I would guess in the day of faster decay the proc might have helped sustain higher fury?

As what makes a good costume is equivalent to asking what makes good art? The following, originally painted in 1894, sold at auction in 2015 for $658,000. Allow me to suggest that what is art is what you would spend money to own because you like it. It varies from person to person. And what one person will praise another would see no value in or think is junk. The painter of the following was considered so poorly he was unmentioned in art history texts from 150 years ago. Now he is considered a master of the Rococo period. How times change, eh? I will say that my standards for praise are not the same as, "costume I wish I had come up with" or "a costume I want a character of mine to have". Over time I have gone from, "I find it outstanding on solely its merits" to "it causes me to pause when scrolling through the costume thread", to "it evokes the character name/bio", to "it strikes me as a labor of love", arguably becoming less discriminating over time, whereas if the criteria was, "I have to give the poster 10 million influence" if I indicate I like it I might be considerably more picky. On the other hand, there is "real world" artwork I have seen in museum which has floored me for reasons other than pure, aesthetic appeal. There was a piece at the Hirshorn depicting a street scene in New York City which, when I saw I wondered why there was a photo in an exhibit which was about paintings. Then I got close to it and noticed it was a painting. The artist had individually painted each brick in every building or wall and every other object in the scene was composed of the tiniest brush strokes. I was floored. The scene itself...nothing special. The painting however still leaves me stunned thinking about it a lifetime later. Like with that painting, I consider broadly what I see. But that is me. Your criteria are yours and completely fair for you to use for your judgments.

My first: Not anymore. I'd blame Carly but at this point that seems like piling on.

Thos of us who came up using HP calculators would. 😊

I thought Scranker referred to Tankers who thought they were damage dealers.