Metatheory

I'm not sure exactly what the mechanism is (PC has +1.0 mez protect naturally or whatever) but it is subjectively useful against holds. One time I was duoing controllers vs Carnies. I kept getting held and the other player didn't. Noticing they had acrobatics and following a conversation with them I respecced into it. Since when, I only get held if I mess up my initial mez roll out on them (i.e. they have time to stack blind on me). It is a good option for squishies IMO, even if it can be hard to squeeze in sometimes.

OK, I see this is a known bug actually:

I made a new character today that seems to have some problems. Most importantly, when I level up to level 4 the third power in the secondary set is not available! This problem persists across reloads (screenshot is actually taken form a level 10 respec after log out and log back in). Shinobi-Iri becomes available at level 6 for me. There are other issues with this character as well, including the display name shows green even when 'helper' status is selected (should show yellow) and on completing the Protect Atlas Park bank mission no temp power was received despite meeting all the criteria to get it. Is it time to start over?

Usually trouble with playerslot.txt is caused by not having 'remember account name' ticked on the log-in screen. In this case you should have generated the initial playerslot.txt by having the checkbox active. I believe its point is simply to save changes made in the UI to the local account. i.e. it is not intended to be a useful tool for sorting the character list offline.

I am also interested in using fear powers in interesting ways. There is also the Fear Incarnate power for maintaining Vigilante alignment for 7 days. HCWiki

How did you floor his regen? Procs in the rad blasts?

In my opinion 'fighting' pool on a Time/ is a luxury/unnecessary pick. Those three powers and losing the pool can open up some interesting other options.

If you visit City of Data you might be able to sniff out some of what may lie ahead

For me radios are the worst designed part of the game, unless you want progression optimized at the cost of everything else, and it seems like many people do want that, which is fine. That's blueside, of course... on red you have to run radios to get some contacts in each level band, which is super annoying when it goes up to 5 radios to unlock the bank job. The old contacts have their main story arcs which can be accessed via Ouro, there can be quite a lot of other content worth playing if you have any interest in the story aspect of the game. I don't believe there are any merits available which can't be accessed by Flashback, but there are other advantages, including: Every mission has some of kind of story element, more than the radio missions. Mini-story arcs which are chains of related missions. A hell of a lot of lore, e.g. you might learn something about Spirit Thorns, Nictus & the Council, etc. Mixed mob types in missions, sometimes as many as 4 factions in a single mission, so there is a sense of the different enemy groups interacting. Some foreshadowing of later events, e.g. the earliest you can encounter Nemesis blueside is the mission 'Find out who is supplying the Freakshow with weapons' from the level 30-34 tech contacts. So for me the old contacts are a nice option to have, with some good variation in the missions, plus, you feel like you are building up a network of contacts while leveling up which I enjoy. People have mentioned the writing quality; I quite like most of it, and much of it has the advantage of being concise and to the point, as opposed to some of the wall of text stuff in later missions. The hunts are usually OK too. They aren't that common outside of the story arcs and you don't have to take them. Within the story arcs themselves, where the hunts are required for progression, again they are usually pretty quick and easy and you can always pick up a badge or two while looking for the mobs. It is, however, possible to get defeta 45 Rikti and 45 Carnies at level 40 which is pretty nasty as low level Carnies are very thin on the ground in PI.

Issue: incorect power description text in Stalkers - Epic Pools - Weapons Mastery (it retains information taken from the Body Mastery pool

Story Arc: The Envoy of Shadows Mission: Clue received during briefing of 'Disrupt the ritual and look for signs that Hequat is returning' Issue: Text shows 'The...' - it should show 'They...'

Story Arc: The Terra Conspiracy Mission: Two - Take the residue to Dr. Steven Sheridan Issue: After completing the mission the clue says that you took the residue to Dr. Stanley Sheridan 😃

Slow down. Except when you need to go fast. Which is to say, compared to playing melee DPS you need to keep track of a lot more variables, and you need to be watching the team UI as much as the enemy. You can't afford to be stuck in the middle of a long attack animation when there is the critical need for a support power - sometimes a heal to a character whose health is crashing, but often times a stun or a -to hit or a +res will get the job done just as well. That means you need to know where everyone is, which can be tricky if you are just spam-blasting. Don't empty your blue bar when you don't need to. No need to spam heal if the rest of the team is mopping up. No need to fast snipe that LT on half health when the scrapper is about to anyway finish the job. Etc.

Thanks for the feedback. Now, I am considering taking OG so maybe Dark Pit could be a level 47/49 pick... Question (to all): if this power also carried a -9,38% to-hit debuff like every other power in Dark Blast (bar Blackstar which has a whopping -62,5%!), would it become interesting-ish? I think I would take it with the debuff.

Leaving aside the possibility to slot purples which rules it out for leveling purposes... please tell us a little bit about how you use it. It's not my intention to just take a cheap-shot at a weak power - life is too short. I have been trying to use the power for real in game but I just can't seem to find any utility in it (I had overlooked the fact that the accuracy is indeed really poor). There is a respec coming in a few levels and it looks like Dark Pit will probably have to go then.

Alright defenders! Dark Pit: cost 13 endurance. Effect 11 seconds stun (minions only). NO 'to-hit' debuff. Aside from possibly pairing with another stun - like Thunderclap or Repulsion Field - is there any reason to take this power? It seems hellishly expensive for very little reward. Unless I am missing something in here it seems like one of the absolute worst powers for pretty much any AT.

In the mission 'Drive away the D.U.S.T. cell' from Nadia in First Ward I came across this potential glitch in the First Ward variant of one of the typical office map configurations. Here I can see the mission boss through a gap in the walls. As I was playing a gravity controller I just wormholed him out through the gap and skipped all the troopers which lie between us if I had taken the path up the stairs... neat!

This issue resolved itself for me. After some hours the updater was able to process correctly and the game can launch as normal now. Note: updating the beta shard was not a fix for me, I received the same error for all of the available shards when running the HC Launcher. For reference, this was the log trace up to the fail point:

I'm unable to update after the latest patch. Persists across a restart. Any tips? ((I can access the game OK using Tequila))

From the Depths of the Human Psyche comes everyone's special inner darkness... The Shadowself!

Congratulations, @Seen2BeGreen, for a very fine win last week! Competition this week looks even tougher already

Did someone say Kobolds Together?

I think it can be worth thinking about trying to knock the enemy down before you have high melee def available so that you can get time to trigger your attacks without taking return fire. So even though you won't need Dark Consumption really, when you have Touch, you can treat it as an attack with a side effect of replenishing endurance... and it can take an Overwhelming Force chance for KD proc too... Similarly why I included Spring Attack, which inherently does KD. So double chances.

I actually ended up going all in, using Spring Attack to zoom in to Drain position, and rounded it out with a PBAoE incarnate nuke as well. Not a lot left after all that. Since that time combat teleport has also come into play (non-damaging, but available much more often).

Are you enjoying it? Because if you are then you are most definitely not doing it wrong! No doubt there are 'better' secondaries than dark, but I found it to be great fun and very serviceable - even before they made the sustain power less reliant on hitting its target. Soul Drain, as you point out, is really interesting on a blaster because it lasts for a long time and can provide a big boost when there are several targets. Also, it can be quite a serviceable PBAoE attack by itself, and seeing you are in melee anyway... ☺️ With all the other gadget-y powers that come with it there are a lot of good concepts for a melee focused blaster. I made one with Radiation Blast last year and it was a lot of fun. You might find some interesting bits in here: