[When I say....]

Counterpoint, you know they give the same XP for both deaths?

[how are blasters supposed to solo?]

Thunderstrike sets in ranged ST attacks and Artillery sets in ranged AOE attacks.  This plus defense pools can give you excellent ranged defense.  If you can get above 30% range defense in your 30s you'll be plenty safe to solo... then in your 40s and up to level 50 you're going to want to be at 45+ defense. 

 

And then just stay out of melee.  Hover is the easy way to stay out of melee... but I prefer just running and jumping around using the terrain, combined with lining up cones, you do a fun type of dance always 1 step ahead of the attackers while doing effective damage.

 

If you add in knockdowns and slows, you can be extremely safe.  In theory you may think you need AoE defense also, but in reality AoE attacks are generally weak so they aren't going to kill you (unless their status affect does).

 

[Levelling advice 40-50]

OK... first off.. Don't rush.  I know you want to get to 50, but seriously, you're not missing out on a secret handshake prize vault by hitting 50 this week instead of next week.

 

That said, I usually work on accolades once I hit 40.  Killing 100 fake nemesis alone usually gets me through level 41.  Then I start Tina McEntire arc until I get the arc that finishes with Positron.  That gets me to 44.  Then a few more missions to 45 where I can start Maria Jenkin's arc and missions for the rest of the Portal Jockey enemies.  At that point I'm about level 48.  That's only 1-2 more Task Forces from 50. 

 

The only TF's you can't do before 50 are Tinman and Apex.  ITF is probably the most common one for XP, and Penelope Yin for merits.  I'd avoid "Speed ITFs" because they don't give much XP when truly run for speed.

 

 

 

 

 

[Gratitude. Because all I have against hate is love.]

22 hours ago, Aeroprism said:

and this led me to read some Reddit posts

 

This is where your day went in the wrong direction.  This is never a good thing.  Not ever.  Not once in the history of mankind has doing this ended well.  Stay away... stay far away.

[Endurance Drain Should Do Something]

4 hours ago, Player-1 said:

Hello all,

 

When the powers team revamped Electrical Blast, endurance drain became a hot button issue. The concept of "shocked" came about as a way to address the core issue with the mechanic being that it is incredibly binary: either it does nothing, or it for all intents and purposes locks down the target forever. This is why certain enemy ranks were altered to have a new endurance floor that allows for some power use, but if they are kept drained it would still reduce their attack rate significantly. 

 

"Shocked" allowed for a scaling effect where there was some benefit even if you did not fully drain a target, but it is not applicable for all instances of endurance drain either thematically or mechanically. This is something we are still looking into as it would have game-wide implications.

 

Just make sure you put "SHOCKED" in big letters when you do it, so people can feel happy about what they've done.  

 

(btw, I'd go with "EXHAUSTED" myself, but whatever it is, make it visible)

 

 

[Endurance Drain Should Do Something]

My simple fix... Endurance should be able to go negative by about 10%... That way you can drain them and then keep applying drain to keep them below 0.   But also balance this by making AVs/bosses more resistant to endurance drain.

[Cones, and the strangeness of procs]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

AR Blaster rocks +35% range, +55% with alpha.

 

One of these days I'm going to do an AR build focusing on exploiting cones.

[Will you get avoided if you have Debts?]

7 minutes ago, Palehood said:

Ain't that right. 😁

 

If I recall correctly, you don't even get debt below level 10.  I'm not sure where the trolling stops and starts here.

[Cones, and the strangeness of procs]

I think the proc question was answered.... just adding that I'm with you on enhancing cones for range. 

 

The area is PI*R^2 x (angle/360)... Increasing R is increasing the squared component... so you're double dipping on the enhancement value.   20% range increase increase the area 44%.  40% enhancement = 96% more area.  And more importantly, that added area is right were you want it to be, out there in front of you where the spawn is.  Practically speaking, a blaster's cone with boosted range range easily doubles the targets hit on a regular basis.  It's literally the difference between reliably hitting 1/2 a spawn versus reliably hitting the full spawn.  And it comes with no added risk from having to enter closer to melee range.

[The age old question.....]

I assume it's people who load slowly and they'll move once they're loaded in.

[Being Selfish for 2% def]

On 3/28/2024 at 5:03 PM, NatashaMalenka said:

Am i in the wrong here ?

 

Honestly, since you asked, my opinion is, Yes.  You're in the wrong.  If your screen is filled with a teammate, just turn/adjust the direction your facing.  

[why cannot people use words right? Remote bomb... remote?]

I've been looking for the remote to the downstairs TV for a few months now.... I'm thinking maybe it exploded.

[How do you play?]

I do min/max builds.  But these days, it's with some self imposed restrictions.  For example, my latest was "I'm going to make a resistance based toon with a solid heal and good AoE damage."   I fit a theme/costume to the build I end up with, which turned out to be a Staff/Dark Brute named Shadow Dragon Monkey.

[End game content that is not incarnate related]

My suggestion is to take them red side and go under cover with the villain groups.  That'd be a very street level hero thing to do.  

[Most merits per hour?]

Sorry if I missed it, but I don't see Yin TF being mentioned.  That's as good as anything else mentioned and gets run very regularly.

 

Also, running DA repeatables is 1 merit per mission (2 on the first one each day).  If you run those at easy difficulty settings, that's pretty quick.  Dull, but quick.

[The Officially Unofficial Weekly Discussion #71: Do you design specific characters or explore what can be designed?]

I might start out with an idea, but by the time I'm done, it's something else completely... being so influenced by what look appeals to me and plays well.

[AI build]

On 3/12/2024 at 6:54 AM, Ukase said:

I've tried to get ChatGPT to offer a build. It offers a choice of primary/secondary, but doesn't (yet) grasp what a build would look like. It does a fairly good job on the bio/origin story, though. 

 

Given that it's just using pattern recognition based on the existing pool of data, I would expect ChatGPT responses to mimic the most frequent posts on this board.... so lots of vampire references and dark/dark corruptor suggestions.

 

 

 

[Permanent Team Synergy (8x Leadership)]

Make VEATS so you can run have 16 of each power, not just 8.... I think they get the top multiplier, too.

 

[funniest thing i read all day]

Bug, or feature... ?

[Champions Online]

I would log in CO looking to do team content and just flat out not find a team far too often.   Whereas, here, the challenge is to send a tell before the teams fill up.  In fact, I think Homecoming is more team friendly than Live was.

[On the new CoT and council......the good and bad so far.]

 Maybe this means support ATs can finally contribute more than helping to keep other support ATs alive.  (... and debuffing the AV so it dies in 8 seconds instead of 10).

['Reverse' Blaster Archetype]

What you're asking for is basically already available by just playing a blaster in melee.

 

Now if you want to make some new animations and melee options so I can throw a fire ball with a swing of my katana, I'd be down for that.

 

 

[So many old 50s….]

My alts are organized like a car collection.  Up front there's the cars I love and drive regularly.  There's literally no expense spared on these.  They have all the best costumes and names.  Highly tuned builds.  Any adjustment needed as a result of powers changes get made as my first priority after release.

 

Next there's the retired section.  These are may classics.  They're cars that used to be up front, loved, used daily, but now are just kept in a place of honor, but not driven.  Their builds are never updated, but also never stripped for parts.  And their names and costumes are never reused.

 

And then lastly there's the junkyard.  Out back... tons of cars that I'll strip for parts, or costumes... most with bastardized names so I could reuse a name and concept that I liked.  I'll sometimes sift through the mess and pull something out to clean it up and turn it into something worth of the front few pages.  But basically they're just sitting there collecting rust.

 

 

[PUG Life: I was the problem]

Sleep is a great tool for soloing... But on teams it's just much more practical to buff the heck out of your teammates.

[Blaster that doesn't get CCed to death?]

Martial Combat has "Inner Will."  This give you 60 seconds of status protection but has a long CD so it's not possible to have it up 100%, However, if you set it to auto, it doesn't fire until you get mezzed, thus you get protection when you most need it, and then it generally lasts for the rest of the fight and more.  If you combine this with really high ranged defense which will make most mezz powers miss to begin with, you'll be very close to immune.