roleki

That's all well and good, but some changes there's really not anything to test, other than to say "Yup, I sure make less while farming now!" or "Gawsh, I can't convert Emps to Merits anymore!" which may be music to the devs ears but that isn't "feedback" in the traditional sense. What were we supposed to say? Certainly not anything like "This change will have no impact whatsoever on the people who demanded it but will likely cause the people it DOES affect to lose some enthusiasm for the game at a time when interest is already waning." because that's just going to be read as "It's a shit change, I'm going elsewhere!" even though that's not exactly what was said.

Your mileage may vary, but you can save a ton of inf by planning your build in Mids, and putting in bids early on recipes for enhancements you'll need when you hit level X. I can count on one hand the number of enhancements I was still waiting for at 50 across a good couple hundred builds, using that approach. The market will always get the best of you if you don't have a plan and the patience to see that plan through.

" @Troo never has a second launcher at home!"

This thread, or life in general?

I'm not going to pretend I speak for anyone, but I can see where Snark is coming from with this; he may have a perfectly valid and cromulent 'fix' in mind, but given the number of fart captains patrolling the boards these days, it's not even worth the effort to propose them because it's all just fuel to the fire anymore.

I sympathize with you, but, the boilerplate answer is that marketeers aren't adding piles of inf to the market, they are concentrating inf that is already there. That's a little too simplistic a take on what's really going on, but it's correct enough that the distinction is evident.

Fire/TA does generate a tremendous amount of orange numbers; the biggest problem is fitting all that awesome into one build. I just realized last week I had an unslotted Ice/Storm Corruptor languishing on Excelsior; slotted it up and damn if that isn't an entertaining little bugger.

I have no trouble believing that; if there's one thing I've learned about these devs, it's that they love themselves a small sample size to work from. And to be honest, I've been around here for the better part of three years, and I have never seen forum mainstays grumbling as much as they have leading up to and following P4. I get that change is not always popular, but people who used to be the voice of relative reason in tumultuous times are the ones being turbulent now. That can't be a good sign.

Angst. Brute angst outpaces Sentinel angst by a country mile, and comes really close to out-angsting the xEATs. The other day I logged in to find my Staff/Regen Brute was hanging around Hot Topic. We know Brutes don't excel at any one thing, they just split the difference between a Tank and a Scrapper, more or less. In theory, if you drew a line representing 'survivability' with Scrapper at one end, and Tank at the other, Brute would be pegged in the middle. Same goes with damage output. Now, if you buff Scrapper survivability or Tank damage, if you don't make a corresponding move to re-center the Brute on that line, then it's going to seem like the AT is getting short-changed. I would argue that Brutes got the shittiest ATOs of the melee types, their inherent is janky as hell, and they never got a corresponding damage buff when Tanks got so blessed. In that light, Brutes have been getting screwed for the better part of a decade by every dev team that ever beheld them. But, until the scourge of farming is rooted out, they won't touch Brutes except maybe to make them even shittier. Maybe when that happens, the character creator will just ask "Tank or EMP?" and you just press the button and boom, you're a level 50 doing PI radios the right way.

I imagine they will settle in the 1M-3M range once everyone that goes nuts for such things finally settles down to realize they could have accumulated them organically. As for the topic at hand, this is a game that lays literally millions of character options at your feet, and then expects you to invest (conservatively) 20 hours into each character in order to bring them to their full potential. To my mind, that model punishes experimentation and rewards cookie-cutter combos that lack any semblance of the imagination that went into making so many options available to the player in the first place. I find the real joy of this game lies in the under-explored corners. Nobody runs an X/Y, can I make that work? What combo can damage (not necessarily defeat) the most enemies per click? Can I make a Pylon completely and permanently unhittable? By removing the most significant barrier standing between me and the answers (that being 'time') I can find out for myself, then go ask another question, or, very important: revisit the question later on. I may not play the game the right way, but I would wager I've fired off a much wider array of powers than the average player, and in doing so answered more questions than I ever would have slogging through "the journey" on even a couple dozen characters. It's unfortunate that my approach to the game is being systematically weeded out, but I've already answered most of my questions, anyway. It took 3 years and 300 some-odd alts, but, I got what I was looking for.

P4 definitely seems to have ramped up the forum PvP. Personally, I think the reports of the demise of the Brute are greatly exaggerated, but that doesn't mean I disagree with the overall sense that the game is regressing towards the "good old days" when Tanks were the center of the universe and nothing could be accomplished without one.

I don't actually monitor TP protection specifically, but I often leave CA open when I'm fine-tuning a build and have noticed the TP protection winking on and off. I'm weird, but not "monitor TP protection" weird.

I've always taken Cold Snap and Flash Freeze on my Ices, because they're an excellent 1-2 opener, then I pop into melee and start tackling the bosses. The damage in ice slick kind of borks Flash Freeze, but the fear in Cold Snap and more effective Confuse in AA make up for it.

In my Combat Attributes, TP protection whipsaws from 100% to 0% seemingly at random. I've never timed it or anything, just thought it was kind of a funky way of making it an incomplete protection.

I usually do Briggs' outdoor maps, if I'm not clanking around in a cave.

Well, the same aggro problems apply to Scrappers and they don't even get decent resists. I make jokes that they want City of Tanks, but, come on. It's on rails now.

I thought the moaning about P4 changes was a little overblown, and testing on some other ATs bears this out, but last night I got my first chance to run my Dark/WP Scrapper after the update, and holy crap... everything scatters like crazy. Seems to happen when I draw new aggro from mobs adjacent to the one I'm working on. When the original mob drops below the aggro cap, some of the ancillary mob closes to melee to bring me back up to the cap, but as THOSE are defeated, their buddies never close to melee to replace them. End result is me drawing fire from a constellation of single mobs 80' away or so, and if I move, they'll chase me to the extent that they get 80' away again, but they never close to melee range. I think some of it has to do with Touch of Fear, or at least, I didn't start seeing such behavior until I scared some Warwolves and they went scampering clear across the map. I don't know if the ranged guys are just REALLY respecting the priority of the Warwolves or what, but, even when the fear'd mobs return and are defeated, nothing that's lobbing ordnance at me ever closes to melee range, even if I'm not otherwise engaged. Anyone else seeing something like that?

What about rain that goes straight up, like in Forest Gump? Because, Ice Slick does that now.

Personally, I loved the cacophony of Howling Twilight, but I understand not everybody becomes giddy when the walls of their house bow outward and the roof lifts into the sky then crashes back down to settle at an odd angle. I'll have to figure out some other way to identify when the GM has a regen debuff applied.

Yeah? So to your mind, when General, LFG, and Help are all sneering at them, and they come here to the forums and see the same thing, they'll just shrug it off and Play The Game The Right Way? Ok.

One thing I DON'T like about P4 is the smug shitbreathing some people are doing about the confusion surrounding the sudden disappearance of AE from AP. Hahaha, fuck those people who dared logging into your carefully gatekept ancient ass game, amirite? Who needs em?

As far as typed damage goes, have not noticed a difference, but I always build for positional over typed. As far as new aggro, it's made my farming a little more efficient, but not enough to go bonkers about. AE leaving AP is a minor inconvenience, I just Team Teleport my alts to where I've set up shop and continue as I had. I did roll a Symphony/Sonic controller... Probably will not be doing much with this (too many cones for my taste) but that pet is crazy, can accept any piece from *44* different IO sets. That's a few. Ran around on my Ice/Storm controller for a bit, digging the new Shiver, and the damage in Ice Slick is most welcome but I have to winder if the added damage/slotting is worth the extended cooldown, especially when Freezing Rain does more damage to more things more consistently on a 33% lower recharge. Got sidetracked levelling-up and slotting an Ice/Storm Corruptor I'd PL'd last year that was flagged by the name reservation thingy, so didn't do much else the rest of the evening P4 related. So far, so good?

Are we going to need an Echo Echo Atlas?

If I'm using Bopper's formula correctly... PerfShift% with its 1.5PPM comes out to 0.014 chance to fire off every 10s. Energy Manipulator Stun comes out to 0.019. Power Transfer Heal and Panacea HP/End both come out to 0.029. Regenerative Tissue Regen, Miracle Recovery, Preventive Medicine and Numina Regen/Recovery all seem to be 100%? I think it would be cool if those last four worked like that, but, no idea whether they do.

Where's the fun in that? Just run in there screaming, naked and wild-eyed. Take the Medicine pool. Go bonkers!