roleki

I think knockdown is just really, really low-magnitude knockback; I've noticed that if I throw a KD power at a way-gray mob, they fly backward as if it were KB. But there has to be more to it than that, because I've slotted Gale with KB:KD and still sent low-level mobs flying. In any event, I think this is down to some interaction between Disruption Arrow and the unlit OIl Slick. This afternoon, I took the Annihilation -Res proc out of OSA and it was still throwing random mobs out of the AoE in the Portal parking lot. Yellow-con Death Mages seem to be as liable to go flying as gray Possessed Scientists. If the slick is already on fire when I throw Disruption Arrow, nothing has flown out (so far). ETA: not really relevant, but I seem to get better mileage out of the -Res proc than I did a Positron's Blast proc. With the -Res proc, each tick of damage rounds up 2, whereas the damage proc hits once (when the slick is lit) and maybe hits one one guy in the group for 147 or whatever. With the -Res proc slotted, OSA gets rid of Lt's and Minions in one application. That was interesting (to me).

If it's correct I can live with it, but it seems weird to me.

It's not something I've run into very often myself, either, and I run a lot of -Res and KB-type characters. I wish I knew more (anything) about how procs and pseudopets work, because as I understand it, the -Res proc in OSA just fires off when I initially use the power, not when the Oil Slick pseudopet is summoned, or when the burning slick is summoned. If it works differently, I might have to reload OSA with more procs because it accepts a small slew of them.

Unlock and populate your Lore and Destiny T3s; each one applies a level shift but it only applies to Incarnate content, so far as I can tell.

I can't really speak to other ATs, but I run a ton of controllers and in my experience, nothing is as wash-rinse-repeat as a Grav/Time. That's not a BAD thing! Grav/Time just does what it does over and over and over, and it doesn't care about endurance or recharge or defense or pretty much anything happening around it. Grav/Time has an answer to whatever you run into along the way; it may not be the best answer, but it's an answer. Fire/Kin may be ubiquitous, but a MISS! can change how the next minute or so plays out; Grav/Time is pretty much agnostic on that front.

Every so often I'll take my Ice/TA out for a drive, and the past few times I have done so, I have noticed an odd... thing happening. Basically speaking, Disruption Arrow is somehow blowing mobs out of the AoE of an unlit Oil Slick Arrow, but not an ignited OSA. Goes like this: 1) Flash Arrow (slotted 1x Siphon Insight Acc/TH, 1x Siphon Insight Acc/Rech) 2) OSA (slotted 5x Ragnarok minus KD proc, 1x Annihilation -Res proc) 3) Disruption Arrow (slotted 2x Rech IO) 4) Mobs blown violently out of AoE, like easily 10' from where they were standing. But, if I do this: 1) Flash Arrow 2) OSA 3) Ignite OSA 4) Disruption Arrow 5) Mobs flop around, burning like they should What I *think* is happening is the -Res proc and the Disruption Arrow -Res are combining to give negative -KB resistance (?) and it's multiplying the pulses of KB from OSA. I think. Does that sound right? Or is this some kind of bug?

On the one hand, between the sunk cost of the catalyst and auction fees, you'd 'lose' about ~5M per attuned purple. On the other hand, inf pretty much flies at you from every direction in-game, so what's a few million if the end result is a build that runs the way you actually want it to run?

I think Mind Control fits the bill: confusing people, tricking them into falling asleep, scaring the pants off them, etc. My Mind/Poison dude is patterned after a CIA spook, and that's pretty much as close to a trickster as I can get.

If that was on Victory, there's a nonzero chance that was my handiwork. But, Victory was also the unofficial Goon server back then, so you kind of learned to expect weird stuff to happen there.

Eh, even though it is - at best - pointless to try and define a set of player "archetypes" it is kind of awesome that there would be enough people flocking to this old-ass game that someone would even have the IDEA to try and silo them.

Anything is possible, given enough resources. However, it is implausible that there are enough resources to address THIS issue; I only threw it out there on the off chance that whatever represents a "Decoy Phantasm" in code is already receiving property data from the 'host' Phantasm, meaning there's at least a framework to pass the -KB along.

I brought my Ill/Dark controller to an MSR last night, and as it is courteous to address KB in an MSR, I temporarily slotted a KB:KD in my Phantasm. I noticed that mobs I was targeting through my Phantasm were blowing all over the place, only to see it was my Decoy Phantasm doing it. Would it be egregiously difficult to make the Decoy Phantasm's KB% a variable that matches the enhanced value of the Phantasm that spawned it? Figuring that way, it doesn't pass other weird things to the pet, only the KB.

A whole slew of CoX Heroclix came with the Collector's Edition DVD of CoV; at one time I was buying clearanced copies of the DVD and selling the Heroclix inside on eBay for a tidy profit. It was funny because I could never sell the Statesman figures, and wound up shipping them as bonuses on other auctions.

If you were on Victory, then, probably 🙂

I used to Wormhole mobs into the interior of buildings all the time on Live. I've done it on HC just to see if it still worked, and it does 🙂

It's fine that you draw a line in the sand, but, that line only means something to you. Stop trying to make it mean something to other people.

Which is actually a Nemesis plot.

In all honesty, I have spent about 1.5 hours a night participating in MSRs the last two months, and in all that time I have only seen what I was shooting at once. Maybe twice. That said, I have adopted a few tactics, strategies, and "oh hey!" ideas that I think have helped me consistently hit 1300-1500 Vanguard Merits per Indom zone run from my usual spot in the bowl; my most recent runs have put me in the 2100 range per raid and that seems to be repeatable. And keep in mind, I may be a real idiot so any one of the paragraphs below could just as easily be worthless. 1) Before you do anything! Go to Menu -> Options -> Controls -> Mouse -> Camera Shake and disable that. I have gained 400% more rewards just off that tip alone. 2) YMMV, but if you don't have a fly power, get one from P2W before you zone. Not only does it keep you out of melee range when travelling between pylons, it also enrolls you in the "I Can Help Kill The Dropship" club, and that is a club you want to be in. 3) The lull during the recruiting phase is a good time to hit the /ah for some large inspirations of the Restoration, Escape, and Phenomenal Luck variety. Kind of a "better to have and not need..." thing. 4) If you have powers that do knockback and you're not a Pusher, be a dear and slot the Sudden Acceleration KB:KD enhancement in that power or strike that power from your tray for the duration of the raid. While KB is a perfectly cromulent soft control everywhere else, in the Bowl it is Merit Poison and literally makes everyone around you less effective. 5) Open your Combat Attributes and set it up to monitor your Hold Protection. When you're in the Bowl, Hold Protection seems to be a better indicator of when you're about to die than Defense or even Health. If it's less than a ridiculous number, you've either migrated away from the safe spot or, you're the EA and you forgot to re-apply Faraday Cage like a jerk. 6) Pylon Time is pretty straightforward, but try and avoid touching the Shield while travelling between pylons because it will TP you away from the group and potentially cost you some merits as you travel back, and, also potentially, leave you as the only target of a Drop Ship. Suboptimal! 7) Bomb Time is a little more hectic. If teams 1-6 go to a specific grate 1-6, I haven't noticed. I generally pull up short at the lip of the saucer and click through my teammates until I identify one that is clearly heading to a grate, then follow them in. If you have a patch or another persistent pseudopet, drop that at the foot of the grate when it is nearly dead, to take some heat off the Bomb Clicker Person when the Rikti arrive. When the Bomb Clicker Person enters the cavity, that's your cue to stop using powers with long animation times! When the Bomb Clicker person exits the cavity (or you get a yellow Bomb Planted message) get out of there, you idiot. You don't want to be caught mid-animation when that thing goes off. Ocho) When your Bomb Planted! message comes up (or the announcement in chat is made), go straight to the Bowl. Do things! Deploy Lores! Deploy debuffs! Attack! 9) When you're in the bowl, ABC as in Always Be Clicking. You and your team get partial credit for a kill (and therefore a Vanguard Merit) whenever anything you or a teammate has damaged eventually dies. It's important to keep in mind, ANY amount of damage your team does puts each of you in line for a Vanguard Merit when that target eventually dies, so the more things your team damages, the more chances you all have to win. 10) In the context of an Eda-like MSR, my Ice/TA runs circles around my TW/Bio in terms of accumulating merits, because my Ice/TA has lots of AoEs that I can drop anywhere in the bowl without taking a single step off the badge marker. That said, SOMEBODY has to actually kill EBs and Bosses, so as the teams get shuffled around during the recruiting phase, keep an eye on your team makeup to see whether your focus should be annoying lots of things, wiping out individual targets, or supporting the characters that are doing all that on your behalf. The leads do a great job of balancing the teams so you can usually get away with one focus or another or a mix of all three, but if you're in the bowl and notice a Magus or Priest is in your crosshairs long enough to be hit with the same attack twice, you might want to go punch that one harder. 11) Set up a/multiple targeting macros; Eda's Guide has an all-in-one targeting macro which targets the next available priority target, in the context of a raid. That approach is probably superior to mine, which I have separate macros for Magus, Priest and Rikti. I do that because sometimes a macro will lock onto a target I can neither see or attack which means they aren't in the bowl, and I can click over to the next macro until I find something I *can* shoot. 12) If you can, bring a real live Pet, deploy it, and target through it. If there is a target in range, a Pet will *always have a target whether its been drawn or not. If you don't have a Pet of your own, try sorting out who DOES have a pet, and target through that hapless beast. (*not always always, but usually always) Bear in mind, if you're targeting through pets and chat starts filling with people imploring participants to stop Holding/Immobilizing stuff on the ramps, that's probably your sloppy handiwork, and you'll need to stop looking at chat change targeting tactics. 13) Failing that, find someone in the bowl who is consistently taking damage, and target through them, because they are obviously doing something to piss someone off somewhere. Added bonus, if you're a support-type, you'll already be aimed at the person who would be dead if it weren't for your eerily prescient greenwork. 14) If you STILL can't find a target, look above the miasma for grey damage numbers ticking from somebody else's AoE, and drop YOUR AoE on THAT AoE before everything in the AoE is DoA and you're SOL. The grey numbers you want to look out for are like lots of "1's" or "4's" or just a couple in the low 200s or whatever. Reason being, with everything happening around you, it's easy to mistake someone's Absorb for damage and waste an AoE on a bunch of innocent people who were just hit by an Insulating Circuit. Although really, in the Bowl, there is no wasted AoE. Kinda. 15) Keep an eye on chat for announcements about where pullers are heading next. They reference it by compass heading, so when someone yells Incoming South or whatever and you're facing Northeast, turn around and drop an AoE at the foot of the South Ramp. 16) If you see orange numbers in one direction, turn another direction where orange numbers AREN'T and do what you have to do to make orange numbers appear there. If there's a corner you haven't attacked in a while, throw something in that corner. 17) Get Judgment Ion, and hold off deploying it until a wave teleports into your midst; if you time it right, the effect is beautiful and results in many orange messages and sometimes a dialog box offering to take you exotic places like the hospital or your base. 18) Speaking of death, if you're a support type with some means to stave off the death of others, keep an eye on your teammates' health and do something about it. While it is funny to watch that blaster die, rez, die again, ask for a rez, then die again, you won't be laughing when you pull into the Merit Vendor with only 400 merits because you did nothing to keep your team upright. The more damage your team puts out, the more rewards you get, so it's in everyone's interest to keep on keeping on. 19) If you're a Controller-type or have access to one or more ranged holds, AND you have the Control Hybrid (because why wouldn't you?) remember to stop spamming your Hybrid power when the countdown timer hits 2:10 or so. You'll want to save that for the afterparty, when you go kill the Drop Ship and discover its dank secret.

The folks that run Indom's nightly zone MSRs do a great job of guiding a disorganized mob towards kicking Rikti butt, and they manage to steer clear of the kind of pitfalls you might usually expect from an all-levels-welcome approach. Sure, it may not be the most efficient way to roll up xp/inf/merits, but *I* don't notice because I'm actually having... fun? They have done instanced MSRs on special occasions (Natural Night, for example) but RWZ is usually dead from 9:45PM through 7:45PM so there's not much reason to take it to Pocket D.

Updated or not, that's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

How's about an Electrical Affinity / Energy Blast Defender?

I farm to level and kit my alts. I don't find it any more tedious or enjoyable than the usual spate of radio missions or PuG arcs, but there's the added bonus of not having to pay strict attention to what's going on in-game so I can do other stuff simultaneously. And when it's over, I get fresh 50s with builds that I am interested in using during MSRs and stuff.

Am I just imagining things, or did previous incarnations of this thread link to a massive table where the powers of each set were ranked by percentage of eligible builds that included them? Wherever it was, that was very helpful in navigating oddball builds.

Glad to get it out there, though I am sure tighter/better builds will start popping up soon enough. Still, for my first shot at either Dark or EA, I was glad where it wound up. As for the questions... I find the Stone attacks necessary to the extent that I just REALLY like Stone; for one, you get a solid AoE soft control (Fissure) as pick one, and your second pick nets you a sledgehammer that is capable of consistently dropping 1000+ damage per swing. I could definitely drive around without those two, but I put them in so many builds, it feels 'wrong' on those where i went with PB or whatever. As for procs in the ST hold, it depends on the build; if I have a crazy global recharge, I'll frankenslot the ST hold with procs and avoid slotting it for recharge or taking an Alpha that enhances recharge. This one, I opted for the purple to shore up accuracy and +Rech, then dotted procs throguhout the build elsewhere. Again, the build probably is not as tight as it should be, but I'm VL21 and haven't seen anything OBVIOUSLY broken yet. Scorpion Shield is nice, but aside from getting one-shotted by a Drop Ship or an AV, there's not much I'm going to run into in PvE that I don't have an answer for somewhere in my tray.

It's kind of hard to skip though, being the power you have to take when you roll a /Storm. With a KB>KD, it's a decent FF+Rech mule what hits fairly regularly.