roleki

So obvious: Time Bomb.

Don't suppose you have the Defense/Survival amplifiers to tide you over until you can IO the IOs?

Word for word, that's the backstory from Caillou.

I'm doing my part by spamming the KLM Airlines forums with requests for Fire Farm builds.

I am pretty sure there's no +DAM to Amp Up at all. It's more like a half-strength Power Boost with some +ToHit and +Rech, and adds -End and +KD procs to powers directed at enemies by the affected player. I normally target other support-types with it since they would benefit most from the buffs. Here's the entry at CoD (thanks, @UberGuy) https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=corruptor_buff.shock_therapy.amp_up&at=corruptor

I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I started browsing the forums because that's just what I do when I am interested in something - I go find where other people who are interested in the same thing are hanging out, and see what they're saying. Right now I spend about as much time on the forums as I do in the game; everyone I knew or bumped into regularly in-game have been gone for a long time at this point. I'm starting to suspect they're not all having connection issues. I still hang around the forums because: A) I am an ADHD poster child and my mind drifts easily from tasks that have no value to ME to things that do, and forums.hc is right there B) I like to read the opinions/musings of the regulars who are still around - even if I don't always agree with them - because for the most part, their missives are delivered with a craft and voice that deserve an audience and thoughtful responses B2) But they usually leave themselves wide open for a shitpost response and I am pathologically compelled to oblige I used to give a shit about the direction the game was heading and so on, and used the forums to pontificate on matters surrounding that, but after P5 I realized it is and has always been going in a direction that will eventually scrape me off like a barnacle. From what I gather in outside communications, a lot of people have that feeling. I used to care about that - A LOT - because I used to feel like the game NEEDED all kinds of players in order to keep lingering around, but I've had my fill of farting in that wind tunnel. It's not the game it was when I cared about it, and if it were all to disappear tomorrow, it wouldn't have nearly the impact it would have had it shut down when I did.

That'll be 1,000,000,000 inf.

It's worth going through a Council farm just to bear witness to the cloud of spent shells that get caught in the swirl.

They've probably seen @Yomo Kimyata wandering around talking about giving away millions and figured they hit the mother lode.

But what better place to get links to airline reservation sites than the Homecoming forums?

Not a bad idea, but I almost never have slots left over for pool/EP powers on account of how much I rely on full sets in the primary/secondary and a certain set of uniques on every build. This is where the lack of a single proc that does +Res, +Def, +Regen, +Heal, +WIS, +End, +ToHit, +Rech, -Slow, -MAYO, +Stealth, and KB protection is really glaring.

I wish they would have went ahead and called them irresistible.

I'm not sure what scenario it was that convinced me of it, but I was under the impression that a debuff had to chew through ALL of your resistance above the softcap before it affected your actual resistance.

In *most* cases, the Controllers on a team should be working out of their secondary as their 'alpha' and use that time to identify what (if anything) needs to be locked down when they get into their primary. If the herder hasn't done their job by that time, then the AoE controls are PROBABLY necessary and I don't want to hear a word from the tank about it if that's the click I have to make at that point. Hasten IS cool, I don't understand why people evangelize skipping it. There's a saying in sports that the best ability is availability, and it translates well to other ventures. Want to know why certain decks in Magic: The Gathering outperform others? It's because they generate card advantage, either through denial of resources to their opponent, or by filling their own hand faster than the opponent via extra draws/cycling and so on. I've yet to see anyone prove to my satisfaction that any pool power is worth more than having access to every other power 70% faster; Hasten is more valuable than a LOT of T9s in that respect. I don't judge people who skip Hasten on this toon or that one, but I certainly glance askew at people who go around railing against Hasten. There's being 'different' and blowing off your own head to spite your face.

While the couple Doms I have went Control Hybrid because it's good fun, I *may* have been leaking a little hyperbole sauce with that whole "putting GMs to sleep" part.

I'm a fan of the Experimentation pool as a main traveler. If you have the endurance to keep Speed of Sound up at all times, you can macro-bamf yourself into (or out of) trouble, fly to the side of a lost teammate (or instantly become less lost yourself), or simply click on Pollux and POOF! you're up on the bar, teabagging the guy while he juggles tumblers. You can also teleport to objectives/past obstacles, and with a stealth IO, be kinda stealthish while you're at it. If you have the power slots available to go deeper into the pool, Toxic Dart is a sneaky little devil for what's essentially a cooldown filler or a quick way to say "... and the horse you rode in on" to runners. Corrosive Vial is a nice little auto-hit -Def debuff, so it makes a decent mule for the Achilles' Heel -Res proc. It takes a slew of other procs as well, but I've never had enough slots left over to load it up. Max targets of 5 in a 8' radius, so I always make sure I'm aiming it at the toughest turd, anyone else that it hits is a bonus. Adrenal Booster is basically a super inspiration to give yourself a decent (27%) bump in +ToHit, +Dam, +Rech, and it's a +Special so it'll amp up your mezzes by the same 27%. If for some reason you had Hybrid Control and Adrenal Booster on a Dom, I'm pretty sure you could put a GM to sleep on your own. I have no idea what Experimental Injection does, it sounds stupid and I hate it.

Neither of them were real, so.

While the VPP or whatever are more fun, if it's available I always go for Focused Accuracy. While the global ToHit and Accuracy bonuses are nice, that 69% -ToHit resistance is phenomenal when it's needed. I figure it this way... even against some bullshit, you're going to get a -ToHit or -Acc debuff along the way, so I don't do the math to end up at 95% in dry weather, I want to end up over 95% AND be resistant to debuffs. Hence Focused Accuracy. Put it this way, say I have a Spines Scrapper with a full set of Superior Critical Strikes in Ripper. Ripper has a base Accuracy of 1.0, and after ED, a full set of SCS gives it a 1.815 enhanced Accuracy (1.0 base Accuracy plus .815 Enhanced Accuracy). If I pull up to a +4 critter, I have a 39% ToHit chance. 1.815 X. 39 = .707, so, I have just over a 70% chance of hitting that critter. But I also have a global Accuracy bonus of .57, so my REAL Accuracy in Ripper is 2.385, so my HitChance is actually 2.385 X. 39, or, a shade over 93%. But I also have a Kismet, which gives me a +6 ToHit, so the calculation is actually 2.385 X. 45, or, slightly over 107% HitChance. But I also have Focused Accuracy, which gives another .20 Global Accuracy and +5 ToHit. The calculation is now 2.585 X. 49 giving me a HitChance of a little under 127%. But say I get hit with a single 7% ToHit debuff for 6s. During that 6s, these are my hit chances: Naked Ripper: 32% (1.0 X. 32) for 6s Ripper with just SCS: 58% (1.815 x .32) for 6s Ripper with SCS and global Acc: 76% (2.385 x .32) for 6s Ripper with SCS, global Acc, and Kismet: 90% (2.385 x .38) for 6s Ripper with SCS, global Acc, Kismet and FA: 1.11% (2.585 x .43) for 3s (due to the 69% ToHit resistance affecting duration of the debuff). Point being, even just doing Radios, you're going to run into Council and Arachnos, and you're probably going to get hit with more -ToHit than a single -7. While checking this out a moment ago to see it in numbers, it wasn't uncommon to be saddled with -18 ToHit when in melee on a 4/8. In that instance, the hit chances would be as follows: Naked Ripper: 14% Ripper with just SCS: 25% Ripper with SCS and global Acc: 33% Ripper with SCS, global Acc, and Kismet: 47% Ripper with SCS, global Acc, Kismet and FA: 65% Shorter answer, I don't think there's any such thing as too much Acc/ToHit, unless you're parked.

As someone who would have generated literally billions of inf if double XP didn't carry with it the penalty of 0 inf, I don't see what's wrong with the current system wherein you can choose your XP buff (if any) from P2W and opt to get a little more XP for a little less inf, up to 2X and 0. Not that I would mind making inf along with 2XP, but come on, you have to draw the line SOMEWHERE.

I don't view that as a 'problem' for Controllers because their Power Boost is almost 25% more effective than what is available to Def/Corr and they can fire it off twice as often. True, Controllers lose some other fancy toys by going with boring old PFM, but they benefit from +Special moreso than a given Def/Corr would and it comes in handy for more than just doubling bubbles.

Defenders get higher base numbers on the +Def bubbles (15% vs. 11.25% on Controllers/Corruptors) and better -Res in Repulsion Bolt (20 vs. 15) and Force Bomb (15 vs. 11.25), so there's that. However... FF Defenders and Corruptors just turn into half-assed Blasters after laying out their bubbles, whereas Controllers can lock down hard targets or otherwise do stuff to neutralize troublesome gits after buffing their teammates. Which is a lot of words to say "Clearly, you want a Fire/FF/Primal Controller because you have good taste and are both spiritually and visually appealing to members of all species."

I wouldn't give up completely on that Defender; unlike most other support sets, Dark Miasma never goes out of style, and Rad Blast is just a fun set EVEN THOUGH IT'S RIDICULOUS THAT YOU CAN MISS WITH X-RAY BEAM HOW THE HELL DO I MISS SOMETHING I AM LOOKING DIRECTLY AT WHEN XRAYS MOVE AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT IT'S A DAMN TRAVESTY IS WHAT IT IS AND WHY THE HELL ANY FURTHER DEVELOPMENT ON THIS GAME CONTINUED WITHOUT MAKING X-RAY BEAM AN AUTOHIT I'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND BUT SOMEBODY NEEDS TO LOOK AT THIS WITHOUT MISSING I MIGHT ADD. But yeah, just set that Defender aside for a bit until you've regained your sea legs on a more-forgiving AT like Sentinel or Scrapper. Myself, if I'm in my cups or what have you. I run a Claws/Willpower Scrapper. Functionally speaking, it's three buttons, very hard to go wrong there, and it actually becomes more effective if you accidentally keep running headfirst into giant mob spawns. Also would suggest getting on more teams, and paying attention to what the other drivers are doing with them. Not everything you see will necessarily adhere to Best Practices, but you'll get a sense for who they tend to target first, from where, and whether they chose wisely in doing so. Chances are, if you join a team, at least one of those people is going to be extremely experienced with the game and very helpful. Frankly, I'm a little jealous of people just coming back to the game and stumbling upon HC as it stands in Page 5. Almost all of the unnecessary garbage that hampered character development has been removed, and you can just... go. Kill Skuls.

Oh, you want authenticity? /jranger

When they are finally implemented on a "back to formula" server, I hope they rename the At "Tuber."