Luminara

Not with mag 16.617 KB. It's a rock, not Ralph Kramden.

Clowns with seltzer bottles.

Changelings reproduce by budding, essentially, and they have a "Great Link", which is basically all of them puddled together and intermingling, so they have little sense of personal identity. They struggle to understand biological functions of humanoids, like knocking boots, and attach no emotional meaning, such as romance, to contact with one another. Scientifically, they recognize the role of sex, but since they don't need to do it, and they spend so little time outside of the Great Link, they don't grasp its significance in other contexts than reproduction. Odo (wonderfully played by the late René Auberjonois), who was one of "the Hundred", a group of "baby" changelings scattered across the Gamma quadrant by the Founders so they could expand their empire (they assumed all of the Hundred would experience the same prejudice they did and return (some kind of genetic programming which made them want to go home, to the Omarian Nebula), bringing with them knowledge of new worlds to which the Dominion could bring "order"), happened to pass through the wormhole linking Gamma to Alpha, and grew up amongst humanoids, so he learned to attach emotional meaning to physical contact, he learned about sex and how to engage in it, he developed friendships and even fell in love a couple of times. Cut off from his people, not even knowing there were others like him in the galaxy, he became far more like humanoids than the Founders did. This plays a key role in ending the Dominion War when the series reaches its conclusion, and ending the Dominion itself. Odo brings "humanity" to his people.

Burn is overpowered because cooking at low temperatures consumes more fuel than cooking at high temperatures, due to the necessity to increase cooking time significantly in order to kill all pathogens. You're pumping less CO2 into the atmosphere, and you're ensuring that your meat victims detainees aren't infested with parasites and bacteria. Good for the environment and good for you.

The Dominion was an empire in the Gamma quadrant, created and controlled by shape-shifting beings known as The Founders. The Founders created the Dominion after spreading out across that quadrant and discovering that "solids", humanoids who couldn't alter their form (the Founders were a gelatinous species), distrusted them and frequently killed or drove changelings (individual members of the species) off of their planets. They genetically altered the Vorta, a primitive monkey-like species, to act as their lieutenants (controlled through indoctrination, cloning and genetically imprinted belief that the Founders were gods), and created the Jem'Hadar, a militant species, to function as shock troops (which they further controlled through short lifespans (typically less than 20 years (they grew from babies to maturity in a matter of days)) and addiction to a chemical known as Ketracel-White (which regulated Jem'Hadar biological functions. without it, they died slowly and painfully), and took control of the Gamma quadrant, establishing their dominance through intimidation. Having the ability to adopt any form, any likeness, whether it was an emormous, terrifying creature or a two-dimensional surface, or even raw plasma, meant they could sow dissent or monitor politics on any planet in the quadrant, with as few as a single changeling. They were masters of subterfuge and had millions of Jem'Hadar at their disposal, so they could take over a planet, or destroy all life on it, with extreme ease. They committed genocide to set examples of what happened when they were disobeyed or their "offer" to join the Dominion was refused. They weren't a nice species. Manipulative, scheming, cold, ruthless and thoroughly determined to impose their sense of order on everyone, everywhere, with themselves at the top.

I still love everything Anne McCaffrey wrote. Barbara Hambly's Windrose trilogy hasn't lost any of its magic for me, either. The Piers Anthony novels I enjoyed as an adolescent, though, come across as obsessed with sex, poorly veiled pedophilia in many cases, and not as scintillating as they seemed to my younger self. Some of what he wrote is still interesting and imaginative, but even the good material is overshadowed, in my estimation, by his failure to reign in his erotomania. The AD&D novels that fired my imagination and filled me with wonder, though, come across as bad fanfic now. The only reason most of them were even published was because they were in-house. With all of the grammatical and spelling errors, and the childish writing, no respectable publisher would've ever given the manuscripts a second glance. These days, I spend most of my reading time on subjects like building a brick oven, heating water without electricity, dam engineering and hydrodynamics and other things applicable to improving my life in the cabin, so I don't revisit the books from my past (other than McCaffrey/Hambly novels, which i re-read annually).

Seismic Shockwaves deals knockdown (KB < 0.75). Upthrust deals knockdown. Meteor deals KB. That's only three powers, including the set mechanic (Seismic Shockwaves), and only one of those three is full KB, so your assertion, that the set is "all about KB", is exaggeration. If the real question was, "Why does Meteor deal such heavy KB?", then the answer is "Verisimilitude". Real meteor strikes release an enormous amount of energy, causing debris to fly far, far away from the impact site. The impact can be so forceful that it scatters rubble for hundreds, or even thousands, of miles, and sometimes even into solar orbit. In fact, there's an entire group of meteorites here on Earth which studies and evidence suggest originated on Mars.

That would explain why so many porn starlets know him. Intimately.

Pool attacks alone won't do the job, but a primary or secondary with -Regen will. I did it in 2005. With IOs, and better pool attacks than were available then, it'd be comparatively easy these days.

In the low 30's, you don't have enough slots to fully enhance all of your critical mitigation powers and attacks. If you dump all of your slots in your attacks, you're taking significantly more damage, running low on endurance and frequently struggling to stay in the fight. If you go all out with your defensive powers, you're burning ten times as much endurance using attacks which deal too little damage, and struggling to complete the least taxing content. In the low 40's, you're just beginning to touch on the potential of what a character can do. Some of your attacks are fully slotted, some of your defensive powers are fully slotted, but you're still not experiencing the full package. You've still got clicks with longer recharge times, creating gaps in your attack chain and interruptions in your survivability. You've still got endurance management problems. You've got one, or two, or potentially several toggles not providing as much benefit as they could and costing more than they will later. Your T8 and T9 powers are still being held back by lack of enhancements and aren't showing you what they can be when the build is more fleshed out. In both cases, throwing in the towel is the mistake. Until all of those powers are fully slotted and enhanced, you don't actually know what your character is capable of doing. You don't know whether a power is good or not until you see how it performs at peak, in concert with your other powers. And because of that, you're creating your own bad experiences. The goal isn't to reach 50 for most of us. 50 is just a number. It's a result, a consequence of what we're doing. The goal is to fully realize a character's capabilities and develop an understanding of how that character, that build, really performs. That can't be done at level 33, or level 38, or wherever you decide to quit, because the ability to know what works with what and how well doesn't come until after all of the key powers are fully slotted, the endurance management issues solved, the survivability is there, the attacks feel like they should, the attack chain is fluid... Your approach, that of gaining access to a power and deciding that the whole thing is no good, that the character isn't fun or worthwhile any more, when you have an under-slotted and under-enhanced build and aren't even taking it far enough to fully enhance the power you just unlocked, doesn't mean the power is bad, or the set is bad, or the archetype is bad, it means you're not giving your characters the time and attention they need to properly develop. Of course you're not having fun with them, not when you decide that you know all there is to know about something by glancing at a picture of a silhouette through a pinhole in a dark room. You don't even know what to expect, but you accuse the game of failing to meet your expectations. You make the game less fun for yourself. That's on you. Boasting about tormenting teammates, ragging on powers and sets and entire archetypes of which you haven't even scratched the surface, telling everyone how old you are and how much time you spend playing, those aren't addressing the problem. The problem is you. Deal with it.

You're doing it wrong. You're supposed to be a "dedicated GM", not encouraging people to have fun. Your PBAoE ban should be on auto. You should only lock threads, not post in them, as posting is an incorrect use of your powers. You probably completely screwed up your slotting by using the GM procs and globals, too. And while we're at it, the GM archetype is garbage anyway, so why anyone would make one is a mystery, you're probably better off just using a different AT to get the job done. Jeez. Stop holding back the team and get with the program.

Leave my sneaky zoomy boing-boing alone.

The more I listen to Minerals and Brimstone together, the more convinced I am that it's one audio file of someone using a vacuum cleaner on their colon. cold_loop.ogg , see instructions above. Doesn't stop the draw sound, but it doesn't go on for eternity with that file silenced.

mas·och·ism /ˈmasəˌkizəm,ˈmazəˌkizəm/ noun The tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from one's own pain or humiliation.

It's file replacement or unending audio assault. Go to this thread, scroll to the bottom of the first post and download the file on the LEFT. It's named silence.ogg . Make a copy of that file (you'll be using it a lot eventually, so keeping the original intact saves time) and name it glow5_loop.ogg . Go to the directory where you have Co* installed, navigate down to the directory named data. Create a new directory in data, name it Sound. Create a directory in Sound, name it ogg. Create a directory in ogg, name it Powers. Drop glow5_loop.ogg into Powers. Launch the game and proceed to beat your head on the keyboard when you hear Minerals' incessant whine and Brimstone Armor's constant sharting. But you won't hear Crystal Armor, so mission complete.

I use pool attacks on several characters. On the original servers, I played a Kin/Elec defender who used Air Superiority/Flurry/Jump Kick as her attack chain. Pool it up. They work just fine.

Like this?

The Defense is the same for both. If slotting them for Defense would be what puts you at your total Defense goal, then they're worth it (example: you're at 44.3% +Def Smashing/Lethal/Energy, and you would like to soft-cap versus those damage types, then slotting for Defense would help you achieve that). Otherwise, slot with a LotG +Recharge, or a Stealth IO, or the Kismet +ToHit, or the Shield Wall +5% Res (All), or the Reactive Defenses scaling +Res (All), or any combination of those, and leave it at that. Hover, you can slot for +Flight/Movement in addition to the globals/procs mentioned, but if you have Evasive Maneuvers, you probably won't find it necessary. CJ provides plenty of +Jump Height without slotting, and enough -Friction to allow you to slide up the tiniest incline by holding your Jump key, so it also doesn't need any additional slotting.

And why is Harken dead? Because the AI goes into full moron mode every goddamn time it encounters stairs. Or ramps. Or curbs. Or pebbles. Two weeks ago, I spent twelve minutes watching Aurora Peña run around in circles, jumping onto a pipe, falling to the ground, running up a ramp and jumping onto the same pipe. TWELVE FUCKING MINUTES. I just watched Harken run to the stairs leading down to the floor in that stupid office map, turn around and run away from the stairs, run back to the stairs, et fucking cetera until the building exploded. It's almost 2022. I know we're a nostalgic bunch of folks, but the Daikatana AI has to be shelved. I'm tired of this shit, having to swallow failure when the reason for that failure is bad design, not because I'm a bad player, or because I made a mistake, or because I wasn't trying hard enough, but because the AI is shit. 98c3dd17-788a-464e-b178-880a1dfe1ff3.mp4

I think we're all winters in this thread, because we're freeze to have fun. But maybe we need a polar to decide.

The difficulty adjustments were supposed to be limited to the new SF... but they did add some new critters to certain existing groups, and expand level ranges of critters in other groups, and it's possible that something slipped in without a patch note. Test at default difficulty, though, just to see what happens. If you're still knocked around at +0, there's a bug in either the IOs you're using, or Grounded, or possibly both. Singularity still shows only mag 6.231 KB in Repel (which uses KB, not Repel) in City of Data (and both Family boss versions appears to be numerically identical to the player version, implying that it's the same pet), so a single Singularity shouldn't be doing that with two +KB IOs or Grounded. But if you're being spiked by two Singularities at once, and they both trigger a Repel activation on the same server tick, mag 12.462 KB will break through IOs and status protection. The scrapper shouldn't be seeing two Family bosses in a spawn at that difficulty setting, though, unless it's a hostage-guarding spawn (those typically have two bosses) like the ones around Aurora Peña and Noble Savage (those are Council, though, no Singularities. just an example of two-boss spawns at lower difficulty settings). Of course, theoretically, it could also be related to the anti-rubber-banding changes they made, if they tweaked how server ticks are processed, but that's unlikely. Test it some more, please.