[Aw, Statesman!]

9 minutes ago, Darmian said:

Actors playing Statesman and Maiden Justice etc. 

The return of Big McLargeHuge and Maymay Van Whooters perhaps?

[Are Leadership Bonuses Cumulative?]

8 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

And that would be expected.  Primary > Secondary > Pools (and of course they aren't exactly the same powers)

SoA Assault and Tactics have the same potency as Pool Assault and Tactics as if they were used by a Defender (both versions of Assault give +15% damage and Tactics give 10% To Hit) .  Maneuvers is the anomaly here, 3.5% from Pool (both SoA and Defender value), while Widows get 5% and Spiders get 10% (Widows are likely lower due to Mind Link).

[Are Leadership Bonuses Cumulative?]

11 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

  Heaven help a team facing VEATs who are also running Leadership in addition to their own Tactical Team powers.  The rough equivalent of 16 Tactics, Assault, and Maneuvers ...

VEAT version of Manuvers is more potent.  Where a Defender would have a 3.5% base increase to all Defense, TTM from a Widow is 5% and TTM is 10% from a Spider.  Now that is the stupid part.

[Powerset Essentials]

Range damage sets, I usually expect two standard single target attacks, a conical AoE, a targeted AoE, a variant of Aim, a third single-target strong blast, some kind of ability that focuses a control/debuff over damage, a sniper attack, and a massive damage AoE.  Many follow that formula (Energy probably does it best) while some have variations or replacements.  For instance Sonic Attack lacks a sniper and targeted AoE but gets a second (weak) cone and a second control power.  Fire drops the status for another AoE.  Assault Rifle drops Aim for no good reason (Ignite...) while offering another cone in place of the third strong attack.

[City of Variety]

1 minute ago, Aeroprism said:

Though I need to explore the existing AE content more. There has to be a few hidden gems behind the legions of farms. 

Try some of the Dev choice missions.  Every month or so they pick a couple missions/story arcs made by players and showcase them in the patch notes (look for patch posts with "Dev Choice" in the title under Announcements).  They're usually high quality writing and gameplay and not just endless farms.

[Tips in Pocket D]

2 hours ago, lemming said:

Need to test this on a non-halloween tip...

If i'm not mistaken, you can't normally activate tips inside Pocket D; most of the alignment tips won't let you open them in co-op, PvP or hazard zones.  You're probably seeing an oversight in which the Whispered Rumor isn't subject to that restriction (it can be used in any non-PvP zone; I usually run mine out of Kalisti Wharf) and the mission can choose any applicable door in the zone.  Why it would send you up the elevator is the strange part however as there shouldn't be any mission-enabled doors up there to begin with.

[City of Variety]

45 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Even something as simple as what I refer to as "Door Diversification" would go a ways toward expanding the feel of the game. Everyone's been trick-or-treating, either in this event, the previous one, or back on live; you know how many functional doors there are in the zones. But, somehow, you only ever get sent to a small fraction of them for door missions. If there were some way to add more of the doors in the zones to the 'valid mission doors' list, it would contribute to the feel of variety. Not a final solution, but a step.

 

*Glares at St. Marital's four doors for all warehouse related missions*

[Decision Paralysis - Who to play?]

I've sort of been in this rut myself.  I never found endgame that appealing (not helped by endgame basically being nonexistent until close to shutdown) so I have most of my 50s somewhat abandoned after getting Alpha.  Some exceptions but my 50s usually get shelved unless I find myself on a team lacking something (in which case I usually grab my Thermal Defender because she can seemingly fix any party she joins).  Despite that I do occasionally run some content with a few of them.  15 50s means a steady supply of catalysts per day with a little effort.

 

I have 10-15 more characters sitting in the 30s and 40s, and 10-15 more still in the 20s.  I have a bad habbit of starting new characters then losing interest partway through (often after burning my spare cash on them).  Sometimes I just poke around my character select for a minute or two deciding on someone to play.  Often it just amounts to throwing a nonexistent dart.  Sometimes it reinvigorates my passion for the character reminding me why they have merit, other times I wonder how I even got to that point in the first place.

[Focused Feedback: Blaster Secondary Revamp]

Preface: I haven't tried anything on the beta server and am merely going off what's in the patch notes.

 

I have a DP/Elec Blaster on the live servers who is primarily a close quarters character.  I really don't like the look of the change to Force of Thunder. I can understand that it's clunky for a sustain in the current state and not the best power for many builds, but I found a solid use for it through slotting to make it a useful sustain, damage and defensive power in one go.  As it is on the live servers, putting a Sudden Acceleration KB>KD is almost necessary, but thanks to it being a sustain it can also take Accurate Healing.  I have it slotted with TotN Negative proc and ES Smashing proc and run it as part of my attack chain after jumping in with Spring Attack.  Without the accurate healing it loses one of the two damage procs making it less useful for crowd damage.  I highly doubt Dynamo's damage aura would be able to replace that lost damage and would also likely make any survivors of the Spring Attack > FoT > HoB opening I run flee before I can drop Thunder Strikes or Havoc Punches (granted, I see HoB is getting fixed in this patch, so survivors should be less common).

 

I don't really know though.  I should test the new FoT and see how it plays but I honestly never had an issue with it in its current form and actually liked it for my playstyle.

 

[Post your best costume designs here!]

I got a bunch of these.  Lets see.

 

Doctor Disease, Necromancy/Poison Mastermind.  A stab at a plague doctor who's more interested in spreading rather than curing it.

 

Ebon Pyre, Claws/Fire Stalker.  His powers are demonic in origin, but rather than the typical selling your soul trope the demons work for him.  May have been inspired by Rodin from Bayonetta.

 

Emerald Elegance, Thermal/Ice Defender.  She's a bright and shiny fairy, but don't be fooled.  She's also a pint-sized powerhouse and can turn her allies into powerhouses themselves.

 

Incogmeato, Street Justice/Invulnerability Scrapper.  You'd never guess this dapper looking fellow is actually a bull in a nice business suit.

 

Maria Megavolt, Electric/AR Defender.  My attempt at a steampunker girl.  Who knew brass and steam could generate such electricity.

 

Sonic Brainwave, Sonic/Mental Blaster.  Being infused with psychic abilities left him a little unhinged, he prefers screaming at people through their minds rather than simple telepathy.  Takes some inspiration from Psycho Mantis.

[I'm sorry, Scrapper Archetype...]

14 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

Scrappers have a place on a team. Someone has to hold the capes.

All teams need a flooring inspector.  When Blasters are out to lunch, Scrappers are the next best thing.

[Post your best costume designs here!]

I've still got more outfits to show off.

 

Commander Voltage, Electric/Martial Blaster who's my attempt at a Speedster type hero who may also be a discount Synapse.

 

Mighty Density, Kinetic/Energy Brute.  A hulking mass of, well, mass.

 

Chill Axe, Axe/Ice Scrapper.  He just wants to chill.  He's also my main argument for why Prestige Power Slide needs a "No effect" option.

 

Phantasmal Virtuoso, Illusion/Dark Controller.  With him, it's all smoke and mirrors.

 

Thunder Funk, Electric/Sonic Defender.  His electrifying beats are the life of the party.

[A couple of costume questions]

1 minute ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I was trying to find that aviator's leather helmet-looking hat for a costume the other day and apparently missed it.  Is it under hat, half helm, or what?  And what's it called?

I think the one you're thinking of is the Resistance hat, under hats.  It's pretty close to a bomber hat.

[Since we're staring at our PCs...]

I haven't updated my background since I updated to Windows 10 several months ago, i'm lazy.  But, I do have a bunch of backgrounds I've used in the past.  Check them out.

 

This was the last background I used before updating.  I use a program called Launchbox to handle a fair bit of my emulation and the program has a repository of artwork for games.  This is something it had for Chrono Trigger.

 

Before that, this screenshot from the beginning of Hollow Knight

 

At one point, I was using this artwork made for Dust An Elysian Tail

 

Wasn't used as a desktop background, but I had this shot from Zero Wing as my login screen background for the longest time.

 

Not my desktop background, but I use the official promotional artwork for Mega Man in Smash Bros as my phone's background.

 

There was this developer screenshot from Sonic & All-Stars Racing, featuring AGES as the F-14 Tomcat from Afterburner flying over Outrun Bay.

 

My newest background is this fun little Splatoon and Team Fortress crossover.

 

Not pictured because there's too many of them.  For a while I also had a rotation of screenshots of the various starships I piloted in Star Trek Online on rotation.  The game might have been meh, but damn were some of those visuals great looking.  If there's demand I might post them later.

 

[That Moment of Realization . . . (Games as Art)]

I think i'm gonna be a little sappy, but perhaps my time playing Pokemon Silver when I was younger showed me that.

 

I started the game over after giving up my first attempt when I got to the E4.  Kid me didn't put much work into team composition, and Meganium gets bodied by Will while I had no backups.  So I try again.  Totodile out of the gate, but this time I caught a Sentret early on.  Now I don't know what exactly happened, but I gravitated toward that Sentret above all others.  I taught her Headbutt in the forest and she started practically clear cutting every trainer in my way, especially after evolving into Furret.  Every single stat boost item and Rare Candy I found went to her and she became my champion.  Nearly every trainer went down in a single hit to her ferocious Headbutts or a surprise Dynamic Punch against Rock and Steel types, to the point where she could very nearly sweep Red on Mt. Silver (Charizard would outspeed her).  Something about that Furret clicked with kid me, as if I had actually developed a bond with her.

 

Sadly she's gone.  The battery in my game died long ago, and modern games changed the mechanics so I can't achieve that level of power with another Furret.  Still, in her memory I raised a new Furret in X, gave this one a gimmick moveset (not enough power to keep up with anything, so I taught her Trick with the intent of passing off a Choice Scarf to hopefully screw up Pokemon that would use a stat buff move first) and named her Silver in honor of my original girl.  If I ever decide to play through Silver again on my 3DS, I might just bring her back.

[Weekly Discussion 73: T9s Part 3 - Support]

So when I leveled my Sonic MM past 38, I was severely disapointed by Liquify.  I  theory the power looks great: knockdown patch that cuts defense and to hit.  In practice, the recharge is a lot longer than I would have hoped and since the power has no slow component, it ends up scattering mobs more often then keeping them in range of the debuff field.  Perhaps if the power applied the debuffs seperate from the knockdown (so that if mobs escape, they remain weakened for a bit) it would be more useful, but as it stands I barely use it since it causes more problems in the end.

 

Also, Traps-Time Bomb is a terrible power.  By the time it goes off the fight's afterparty is already over.  The power works conceptually, but the time to detonation does not keep up with the current state of the game.  Blaster's Time Bomb is just as bad.  It might be difficult to code, but what if the Time Bomb was a Remote Bomb instead?  Activating it once will set the bomb, and activating it a second time sets it off if you use it within a minute.  Might make it a bit more usable while also keeping in theme with the set.

[Screenshots of Yore]

Legacy screenshots eh, I have a few of those.  Let me dig some up that I posted to Steam many years ago during the "freedom" days.

 

Here's a Hami Raid from Protector, one that didn't take 10 minutes but took more like an hour.

 

December 2011 when one of the NCSoft admins decided to give Protector an impromptu Praetorian invasion.

 

"Zwill, I asked for a pony."

 

Anyone remember the BOSS_NAME of VILLAIN_GROUP bug?  I had that happen once.  I got turrets as the enemy group, as opposed to a lot of people who reported Storm Elementals.

[Post your best costume designs here!]

8 hours ago, Force Redux said:

I really like these. For Negative Fusion, would you tell me what pieces form the helmet and which aura you used, please? 🙂🙂

 

His helmet is comprised of Mecha Armor set pieces.

Full Helmets; Helmet is Mecha Armor. Detail 1 is Mecha Side Antennas Only, Detail 2 is empty, Detail 3 is Mecha Mouthguard. Color combination is dark purple and washed-out dark blue.

 

He doesn't actually have an aura, what you're seeing in the picture is his Dark Armor toggles.  The glowing eyes are coming from the Soul Noir variant of Obsidian Shield while the rest of the toggles are the standard toggles, minus Cloak of Darkness which uses the "No Fade or Pulse" style so i'm not just a blob of darkness.  The screenshot was taken using the Atom Smasher power, giving the dark glowing fist.  Here's what he looks like without the toggles.  Hard to tell but that's the Freedom Corps Jetpack as a back detail, which I don't use as a jetpack but rather as a power reactor.

 

 

[Was Bio Armor ever balanced?]

3 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Bad enough you have to DIE to use the T9.  

You have to die to use Dark's T9 too, but I never saw anyone complain about that.

[Post your best costume designs here!]

Few more designs coming at ya!

 

Precambria, Plant/Time Controller

 

Negative Fusion, Radiation/Dark Brute

 

Draco Raptor, Savage/Willpower Scrapper

 

Chromatic Spectrum, Radiation/Temporal Blaster.  This costume alone isn't doing justice as his whole theme is being a rainbow generator.  All his powers are bright, colorful, and varied.

 

Metamorphicant, Dark/Bio Scrapper.  With and without armor toggles.

              

 

Time's Eclipse, Time/Dark Defender

 

[Show off your pet(s)!]

This isn't my cat but my brother's.  This is Abe, he's about 12 years old and he's a super affectionate boy.  He's a little skittish around strangers but somehow treats me like he does his owners despite usually hiding from anyone else (even people he should know).  He's also pretty lucky to be alive as he had to have his tail removed a couple years ago due to a cancerous cyst.  Thankfully it didn't spread beyond the tail so he's all right, though the tail stump took some getting used to.

 

[My first corruptor - Psi/?]

8 hours ago, Darkir said:

May I ask what your defense and resistances are (with/without your planned alpha T4)? It sounds like you went for damage procs over defenses.

I don't have the build in Mids or anything, but let me load her up and see what I have.  She's not perfectly survivable but Fearsome Stare's Fear and -To Hit along with Dark Servant's -To Hit aura significantly boost survivability.  Most things aren't able to hit me after I open with Stare and my Tar Patch > Void Judgement or Tar Patch > Soul Drain > Psychic Wail usually eliminates all but bosses (and stuns any non boss survivors).  You'd be right about the proc build, most of my attacks have two damage procs, even Fearsome Stare has two.  Mental Blast is the only normal attack without one, but I used it to three-slot Superior Scourging Blast for the 10% Recharge instead.  Where i'm at right now I managed 102.5% Recharge with potential to add a bit more once purples are in.

 

With everything active other than Afterburner:

Defense: Defensive Toggles are Hover, Shadow Fall, and Maneuvers: 17.29% across the board, with 26.04% Ranged and 27.29% Energy/Negative.  Afterburner would add 14.78% to everything, but obviously not helpful in the "Only Affecting Self" state.

Very few defensive set bonuses in the build, Superior Malice, one Thunderstrike at 3 slots and two Basilisk's Gaze, are providing the R/E/N boosts.  I'd say more defense comes from the -To Hit components of Dark than anything; Fearsome Stare has -19.7% To Hit, and Dark Servant just flatlines anything's To Hit by being close as long as they're not resisting. Intuition Radial can increase that -To Hit further.

 

Resistance: Resist toggles are Shadow Fall (E/N/P) and Dark Embrace (S/L/N/T): 39.04% S/L, 12.5% F/C, 33.74% E, 48.21% N, 32.24% P, 25.48% T. 

Reactive Defenses can boost all of that by up to 10% at low health.  Twilight Grasp on a single target will reduce the damage it does temporarily, Void Judgement Radial has a steep damage debuff and the Dark Servant can also use Twilight Grasp along with Darkest Night. My usual builds tend to shoot for Recharge bonuses when possible, so I generally pick up a couple minor increases along the way to that.

 

If you want, I can rebuild this in Mids and get a proper setup to show it off.  Again it's not professional and very scotch tapey, it's not even complete as I don't have any of the VRs in place besides ATOs.

 

[Board Games! (and card games too, I guess)]

Hey, I inspired something!  I love board games and always enjoy getting chances to play them with friends and family.  Some of my personal favorites:

 

Terraforming Mars is pretty recent, but I enjoy it when I play it.  Last time I played I managed to snag up all the special colonies (I had Noctis and Phobos) while also churning out VP every turn by turning titanium into warships.  That was a fun round for sure.

 

I'm always down for some Munchkin.  I have the first seven expansions, along with some crossover promotionals like the PAX pack.  Things get real crazy when you start factoring in the expansions.  Add some beer and it's a good time all night.

 

Scrabble is an old favorite.  I used to play it with friends in high school during our study breaks on slow weeks.  One time I even got my English teacher in on it and won against him.

 

My brother and his wife enjoy playing Pandemic and I get in on the action.  It can be difficult but co-op board games are enjoyable and tend to not end with people sleeping on the couch that night.

 

6 or 7 years ago I was bit by the Magic the Gathering bug.  Spent a good year collecting cards and testing my mettle at a local comic shop that held Friday Night Magic sessions.  Played during the Innistrad/Return to Ravnica period where multi-color decks were everywhere and dual lands were more prevailant then basics.  My career wasn't a very noteworthy one however, as I was only in the top 8 once in that span.  The only deck that managed that was a blue/black deck themed around rats where the primary gimmick of the deck was to force my opponent to discard their hand then swarm them with rats that could multiply.  It was a nasty deck when it worked as it left my opponent with few options and even penalized them for having an empty hand (ran 4 copies of an enchantment that dealt 3 damage each during standby if their hand size was 0 or 1).  Innistrad mechanics of being able to play out of the Graveyard made the strategy a little less effective however and sometimes even backfired spectacurally as a result.

 

Cards Against Humanity, I used to play that weekly with some of my old internet friends (we played a web version).  So much fun and of course all the awful answers.

 

Other fun tabletop games: Foxhound where one player is a fox and the other is a hunter with a pack of dogs.  The fox has to survive by locating 3 specific tiles out of 20 while the hunter had to trap the fox with his hounds before then.  Also Settlers of Catan, Exploding Kittens, The Resistance (i'm a terrible liar), Axis & Allies, Superfight, Photosynthesis, and so many more.  I love tabletop games, but just need a few more friends to play them with.

[Memorial Island for GM Cyclone]

Would certainly be a nice addition.  If it does end up on one of the outer islands in Ouro though there should be a portal to reach it so that non-flight capable characters can get to it too.  Not everyone has a jetpack.

[What else are you playing right now?]

Blaster Master Zero and Zero 2 were on sale a few weeks ago.  Picked those up and have been playing the hell out of them.  I love the original Blaster Master on NES but never had the will to sit down and play it through given the difficulty and lack of saves.  Zero helped fill a gap in my video game history, and Zero 2 is just an awesome addition to the series.