Luminara

It's not a special day unless there are @Jimmy hats.

Every dog has its day.

Whoa, I didn't know anyone could get @Jimmy to pose for pictures.

That's a reasonable summation of my play style.

How would it be "Farm Free" if scanner/paper missions, tips, story arcs and *Fs remained in the game and farmable?

I'm not a developer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Dude pre-empted a scheduled raid, told everyone there they could do it his way or leave, and cried about it when the backlash hit. That's your example of other players being dicks to someone. The same person you previously stated to be the cause of his own problem, who behaved in exactly the manner you're accusing others of in this thread. The other people are now the ones at fault, not the guy who started the drama by telling people to play his way. You don't see the contradiction there? Never mind, even if you did, the fact that I pointed it out ensures that you'll defend your reversal with your dying breath. *plonk*

You're six months late posting that. It was also debunked. He dug his own hole and wallowed in it for sympathy. Actually, you posted in that thread.

We love you, too. Not that way. Unpucker those lips.

The COVID lockdowns have ended, people have had to go back to work, time is more limited than it was a year ago. The HC team is still here and working on the next update (all i'm going to say without their explicit permission), but they don't have time to hang out on the forums like they used to.

I've been respecing characters for a week, making refinements, trimming fat, and I finally worked my way around to my human-form peacebringer yesterday. I ripped Luminous Detonation out and put Cross Punch in its place, swapped Maneuvers in where I had Stealth, and away I went to test! Surprise, my endurance bar was emptying out in the middle of fights. Not unexpected, since Light Form was recharging in 80.something seconds and cutting my blue bar in half, but I thought I'd accounted for that. I had the Panacea proc slotted in one of the heals and kept smacking Reform Essence after LF crashed, expecting a little bump to my endurance, and it wasn't. After using every respec I had on that character, and the last two I had stashed, shaving off a little +Recharge in favor of a bit of extra endurance and recovery, dropping Maneuvers, juggling attack slotting to reduce endurance consumption as much as possible, and even shutting off Weave, the one Defense toggle I run on that character, I finally noticed that I had the Panacea set slotted in Essence Boost, not in Reform Essence. Face, meet palm. ... I'm running scanner missions and vigilante tips with my Dark/Martial dominator, and I finally come to the vigilante morality mission, The End Justifies the Means. I've done this mission numerous times already, so I know what to expect. I run in, Dominate up, Link Minds and start going ballistic on everything that moves. I clear my way to the final section of the map, barely tolerating Ghost Widow's attitude when her dumb ass falls behind and she goes all pretentious on me (really want an optional objective to smack the crap out of her for being such an overbearing twat), jump into Doc Quantum's spawn and unload the kicking and screaming and throwing things. And, quite abruptly, none of my attacks are working. I'm using every attack I have, I pop Heart of Darkness in a panic because I think my Internet connection might have dropped, and I actually am screaming at this point (more like one continuous AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH) as I hammer away at my attacks... After about 90 seconds of AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH and 21345321513421254, I realize DQ's HP bottomed out and the entire spawn turned neutral before I'd defeated half of the Longbow surrounding him. Head hanging ensued. ... Legionette is one of the few characters I have with which I'll eagerly run Malta missions. With a Recovery stat 5.31 endurance/second, I don't sweat Sappers, and Rise to the Challenge can push my regeneration up to 1204%, which is a HP tick every second (ever so slightly less than a second, in fact), so bring on the Gunslingers. I check the police scanner, find a Malta mission and jump at the opportunity. Sprint straight to the first spawn, which is conveniently tucked away in one of those side rooms in office maps. Perfect, I can use the doorway to control the spawn's approach and the engine's limitation of NPCs not being able to pass through each other to force them all to stand in my cones! I position myself just outside of the room, hugging the wall next to the door, aggro the spawn... And promptly face-plant. Double you tee eff. That's not supposed to happen. That is not supposed to happen! I didn't even defeat anything before I hit the ground! Rassasassafrassa frickafrack mugnugget frugglewump! I did that two more times before it occurred to me that the doorway was blocking line of sight. Which meant Rise to the Challenge, a PBAoE with a small radius and line-of-sight requirement, wasn't doing anything to debuff their ToHit or buff my regeneration.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=prestige.combat_pets Which are also flagged False on Can Zone. And, in typical Cryptic/Paragon overkill fashion, they're also saddled with -75% Res to all damage, -1000% Res to all debuffs and they have 1 HP. Can't have players abusing that 3% +Damage, it could destroy the entire universe.

Vanity pets don't buff. They they can't be targeted or clicked on, buffed, debuffed, teleported or otherwise affected by anything in the game, they're Untouchable for the entire duration of their summon. They don't do anything but follow you around and perform animations. Like NPCs, but with scritchable ears and bellies you can rub without incurring a sexual harassment lawsuit. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=prestige.vanity_pets Neither. The Can Zone flag is set to False. Setting it to True would allow the pets to zone with the character.

The workaround I've cobbled together is to add powexec_location self Spirit Panther Pet to both of my travel/toggle binds. Example binds from my Dark/Martial dominator: /bind v "powexec_location self Spirit Panther Pet$$powexectoggleon Infiltration$$powexectoggleon Sprint" /bind b "powexec_location self Spirit Panther Pet$$powexectoggleon World of Confusion$$powexectoggleon Combat Jumping$$powexectoggleon Maneuvers$$powexectoggleon Weave$$powexectoggleon Sprint$$powexectoggleoff Infiltration" I already use variants of those binds on all of my characters (V to turn on movement power, B to shut it off and ensure that all of my other toggles are active (including activation of Stealth on the characters with that power (eat it, mutual exclusivity!))), so adding the vanity pet to the sequence only required me to adapt my enter/exit strategy (SOP is B before entering a mission, V before exiting, so i'm retraining myself to reverse the sequence). I also found that clicking a door while the summon is animating causes the pet to spawn inside the instance, saving a key press if I forget and deactivate my movement power outside. But this isn't a viable solution across the board. My main has ten toggles, and due to the character limit on binds and the lengths of the names of some of the toggles (like Rise to the Challenge), I can only activate nine of those toggles with a single key. I have to turn the tenth toggle (Form of the Body) on with the travel bind. Squeezing another toggle in on the toggle key just isn't possible, so using a vanity pet on this character would mean redesigning my entire travel/toggle sequence until I could activate all of my toggles without constantly turning my travel power on and off, or dedicating a key to summoning the pet, or manually clicking the power. I can't say I'm enthusiastic about any of those options. Simply having a persistent pet would be preferable.

It'd be really nice if vanity pets were persistent on zoning. I enjoy having my way-cooler-than-@Jimmy cat watch me kicking and throwing things, but I don't enjoy it enough to summon it again every few minutes.

And, per developer commentary, publicity releases, dev diaries and other sources, it was also deliberately designed to be as solo-friendly as possible so anyone could take any character, play for a while and log out with a feeling of accomplishment, even if they weren't on a team. The sole purpose of archetypes, power sets, power pools and power pool restrictions was to make it impossible for anyone to make a character which could not function solo. They actually threw the alpha build of the game in the trash and redesigned it from the ground up, consolidating powers into sets, creating archetypes and assigning those sets to them, taking leftover powers and compiling them into pools, and devising limitations like every player having to select at least one pool power by level 26, and every secondary automatically assigning the T1 to the player, whether they wanted it or not, to force every player to make a solo-capable character, even if they didn't want to. Players forming teams was always Cryptic's preferred goal, but outside of *Fs, Trials and a very limited number of missions, it was never the enforced path of progression.

3 converters, one click, /ah.

The people supporting the idea have said, "I shouldn't have to take a pool power because <REASONS!>", and "Other people should have to take a pool power because <REASONS!>". These comments were made. Not implied, not inferred, outright stated. Pointing out the monumental hypocrisy of bitching because you have to take a pool power to do something, and simultaneously declaring that other people should have to take a pool power to do something just so you don't have to, is not exaggeration or casting aspersion, it's highlighting the arrogance of the tiny minority who made those statements. If you shouldn't have to take a pool power to do something, then neither should anyone else. If "they can just take a pool power" is sufficient justification for your request to change the tame so you don't have to take a pool power, then your justification is applicable to your own request, you can can just take a pool power. Expecting the game to change to suit your whims, and everyone to meekly submit because it's what you want, is arrogant, entitled and selfish. And that's not judgmental, it's objective observation. You are not the center of this world. Deal with it.

The responses aren't negative because we're opposed to using pool powers, they're negative because the fundamental argument, the very foundation of the proposal, is, "I shouldn't have to take a pool power to do something, but everyone else should. Change the game so I can have more options, even if it's accomplished by taking options away from others. Give me the ability to have everything I want in a single package and to hell with the intended and designed limitations of the game, those should only apply to other players." But making other people take a pool power for something they think they need, and previously had but lost because a few players threw temper tantrums about having to follow the same game rules as everyone else, is cool. Yeah...

If you need a teleport, just grab one from the pool powers.

It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to use merits to purchase converters, use converters to turn crap IOs into IOs I could use or sell, and kit out my first build before it was out of the teens. I did that with no gifts, no costume contest prizes, no friends, nothing but the inf* I'd already earned by that point. Another 10-15 minutes every few levels (solo, +0/x1, no XP boosters, no Experienced) paid for every IO I wanted for my "dream build", including purples and ATOs at 50. I didn't even know there were guides detailing various wealth generation methods until afterward. I never used a single merit on the original servers, I left before attunement or converters were added, and I still had it nailed down in 15 minutes, with no assistance. I did that with the next six or seven characters I leveled to 50. No alt funding, no hand-me-downs, just the costumes on their backs and whatever they earned along the way. Merit vendors are everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Two in many zones, a human model and an ATM model. Click the vendor, click Salvage, scroll down to Converters, click Buy, 30 converters in hand, ready to be used or sold, quickly and painlessly. It takes less than a minute to reach a crafting station, regardless of which side you play on or which zone you're in. It takes one second to open the Recipes window and see what's highlighted, and another second to craft what's highlighted. Three or four seconds to open the Convert window, drag an enhancement into it, select the type of conversion and click Convert. If the player doesn't know that the /ah command exists, it's another minute to run to the nearest market and click on a rep. Drag, type in a sale price, click, five seconds and done. A few minutes spent just crafting what's in your inventory, clicking Convert a few times and selling the results, and bam, you're rolling around naked on a bed covered with money. It is trivial. It's not hard to figure it out and it's not a massive time sink. It doesn't even require an obsession with the market or deep knowledge of the game. Any new player can do this with a minimal interest in the game. Oh, look at the maroon and yellow person standing over there, I'll click on that dude/chick. Oh, look, it's a vendor where I can spend these merit thingies. Oh, look there's something that says "Convert" on my Enhancement tray. Oh, look, the vendor sells something called Converters, I wonder if they're related to the Convert thing. Oh, look, they are. Oh, look, the Convert window has a round slot like an enhancement slot, I'll put this enhancement that I crafted into it. Oh, look, there's a menu at the top. Oh, look, the Convert button is highlighted. Oh, look, I turned a piece of garbage into something I really wanted, or can sell to someone else so I can buy what I wanted. Oh, look, I'm filthy rich now. You don't need an IQ over 140 to make inf*. The game all but walks up and hands it to anyone who shows even the slightest interest in acquiring it. They may not acquire it as quickly or efficiently as a marketeer or farmer, but they'll get what they need if they're even remotely invested in the game.

Maybe the Spectrum costume pattern applied to weapons would fit the holographic/elemental bill?

That implies that the 0.67 KD also affects the primary target, which would make the actual KB of Propel 4.82, rather than the expected 4.15, without KB->KD enhancements. I'd assumed that the two effects were distinct, but looking at the data for the power, there's no flag isolating the KD from the KB, or vice versa. The power info and Real Numbers need to be updated to reflect the real KB. I still want to see if Melee_Boosts_60's scaling variable has any effect at lower levels, but I think testing can wait now that it's clear what was happening. Thanks for the additional information, @Bopper.

Making people redesign their builds and forcing them to take pool powers to recover a lost ability, so a other people don't "have to" take pool powers, is not the same as leaving the powers in question alone and expecting people who want optional powers like Combat Teleport to take it from the pool. That's why it's not worth consideration.