arcane

Yeah I’ve been holding my tongue this whole time, trying not to get embroiled in a bout of verbal fisticuffs. But can someone remind me why a few wackos are picking the Fly pool but NOT running all three toggles now?

Make another alt! I get violent withdrawals if I haven’t made a new 50 every week or so. Foaming at the mouth, etc.

Well it has now 🙂

My two most common ones: - 3rd mission in Black Scorpion arc, the kill all. - First Unai Kemen mission (Banished Pantheon) so I can immediately get an easy farmable non-AE mission to play around in (Council Empire).

I wasn’t even aware you ever needed Invisibility. Super Speed + Stealth (or + Stealth IO) has always kept me safe unless the enemies had extra perception?

Did you try right clicking the power and “Close Tray” or whatever it says?

To expand my list, the following blasters of mine are all built for zero-melee: Beam/Time Beam/TA Water/Plant Arch/Nrg AR/Dev Electric being the other primary with a ranged nuke. All of those secondaries with the exception of Devices (build literally only grabbed Cloaking Device and Targeting Drone) have at least 3 solid picks for ranged play when taking procced out holds into account. Time goes one further with Time Lord, but it would seem that mainly Energy and especially Tactical Arrow give you the most ranged toys. I’d say the hierarchy might look something like this for ranged only powers: Tactical Arrow (All Ranged!!) > Energy > Time > Any others with a ranged hold. And then the bottom end being sets like Fire, Ice, Electric, and then the very bottom two being Mental (melee sustain power) then Dark (melee sustain AND melee build up). I think you want TA, Energy, or Time.

All of the above ideas could be fine if balanced appropriately. To me, the non-damage components tend to have tiny values that are thoroughly un-sexy, so just keep that in mind for all of the above... “-Cold Resist” sounds like a jip though unless it had a higher value than Reactive’s -Res(All).

Snarky doesn’t want any melee, so, short of skipping a nuke like a madman, fire is outside the scope of this thread.

Where I struggle most with lucrative marketeering (besides the number one reason: patience), is not using too many converters. It’s tough to know if I should shoot for a better orange IO or settle for one that could sell for a million. It’s so tempting to try to score a LotG. So I appreciate that you wrote how you budget only about 10 per recipe. Will read this more a little later.

My only hypothetical problem with this kind of feature is if the mobs were made easier to accommodate level 1’s because that would make the level 50’s experience way too easy. As long as content that scales with level does not cater to the lower levels, it seems fine here and there. In other words, a level 1 fighting carnies is fine but not advisable. A level 50 fighting hellions is a problem.

Or maybe he’s just saying don’t complain about the natural consequences of your own conscious decisions? Do you want to play your favorite playstyle, or do you want your second arm? Which is it going to be? We have a saying that goes “trying to have your cake and eat it too”. Own your own choices. It’s really that simple. I have made similar decisions to forego meta powers/slottings/playstyles etc for personal preference. I also don’t complain that the game doesn’t naturally cater to each of those decisions.

I also don’t know how the exact calculation works, but, assuming Hasten with two +5 recharge IO’s, I also seem to do fine with about 80% in bonuses. I’m not sure where the exact line is (and Hasten makes it tough to understand) but I seem to have a few seconds of wiggle room in case I am continuously activating other powers when Domination comes back up. And I don’t do the keybind thing either, so when I say it works out, that’s also with some wiggle room on refreshing Hasten.

Yes yes and I love my /sonic too, but we’re very specifically in “no melee allowed territory” in this thread for Snarky’s sake, and that -res + blapping is just too tantalizing on /sonic.

Yep. But that makes it approximately equivalent to Time without Time Lord 😉

You aren’t forced to do anything unless peak efficiency is - no if’s, and’s, or but’s - your #1 value. But if you’re complaining about playstyle issues, it would seem playstyle is your #1 value. So which is it? It can’t be both - as that would mean that “My favorite playstyle must always be also the best playstyle” is a reasonable proposition. Which it isn’t.

Makes little sense to do tbh since /sonic’s most attractive feature is the melee -res aura. But sure you can play with just the build up/sustain/ranged hold as you can with many other sets. Anywho, I don’t understand where this implied idea that a pure ranged build is somehow a rarity is coming from. I have at least 5 of my blasters where I’ve picked up zero reasons to enter melee, and that’s not even starting on controllers, corruptors, defenders, dominators, etc where I’ve done the same. The way Snarky here has been going at this topic for awhile, you’d think he was looking for Bigfoot.

This here. I don’t like the argument that a buff is bad just because it makes an existing playstyle look a bit less ideal in comparison. If you loved the existing playstyle enough, and it’s still there for you in some form, where exactly is the problem? Offering alternatives is not forcing anyone to do anything, and that applies to both the Stalker debate and the combo mechanics / Total Focus debate. If you choose to use the alternatives due to their efficiency, that is a conscious choice on your part that you value that efficiency more than the prior playstyle. EDIT: Yes, I missed a whole new page of posts when I wrote this, but that doesn’t make the point incorrect, so pls don’t be mad at me.

Poison Trap alone makes the set actually one of the best against AV’s since it does easily perma *1000% -regen*.

Beam is my fav of the all-ranged choices personally. Have a Beam/Time Blaster, Beam/TA Blaster, and TA/Beam Defender all with zero melee powers Your S/T chain is awesome and your nuke is sexy.

Could pair cold and hold. Maybe lethal with the debuff to debuff resistance like in Acid Arrow?

So your problem is with powers not being insta-cast? Hard no from me if so, sorry. Best game ever doesn’t need to take tips from inferior games.

Well... if you started in i7 for one thing, you may have missed that radios were new. You used to actually be able to run out of missions for reals if you played before CoV.

I only really street sweep in Dark Astoria since I generally don’t play below level 50 unless it’s for a Yin, Morty, Moonfire, or perhaps the very occasional other TF. Would do it more if there were more options for 50’s. (And that really needs to mean level 54 enemies to be relevant. Possessed scientists aren’t worth anything.)

Yeah, Traps is plenty playable with mobility and toe-bombing, but I do tend to just have more fun with the set when using it to set up bigger death traps - so I tend to play it pretty slowly with long setups when I’m soloing and only speed up on teams. Wormhole or Fold Space synergy makes this particularly satisfying because you can wipe out entire spawns including bosses (alas only level 53 though) with one AoE TP if you give yourself a bit of setup time.