Luminara

Your ideal world. Based on the responses thus far, many others prefer the world in which players aren't forced to use Accelerate Metabolism/Siphon Speed/juggling Jump Packs/+Movement Speed IO set bonuses to reach the old flight speed cap with Hover. I'm in that camp. You lose the protection when you don't actually need it. Between spawns. If you're not reaching the next spawn before EM has recharged, then you've got no reason not to toggle it off. Presuming that you have no global +Recharge (Hasten, IO set bonuses) and no Recharge Reduction slotted in EM (Defense sets), leaving it at the default 10s recharge time, if you are arriving at the next spawn, traveling at unbuffed Hover speed, while EM has several seconds of recharge time remaining and forcing you to engage foes without the protection it offers, then you're clearly not travelling any appreciable distance and you aren't going around more than one or two twists/corners, so you're not so inconvenienced that this requires change. There's no justification for disabling the speed buff while Hover is active in this reasoning.

You're right. I was wrong. It's in the patch notes that @AboveTheChemist linked. 👍 Though, since they can drop from greys, it's really not worth encouraging anyone to hunt bosses for a slightly improved drop rate when one-shotting an entire spawn of deep greys will likely have better results.

All of the Amazon myths point to ancient Scythians. They were the first to practice mounted combat, allowing them to conquer and hold a sizeable middle Eastern territory, which later became the Persian empire (what is, today, several middle Easter countries), and we have Scythian womens' graves providing proof that they were respectable warriors. Several early Greek references to Amazons refer to Scythia. We also know that Persian women used an arsenic paste on their bodies to destroy hair follicles. They considered it pleasing to the eye to be smooth and hairless everywhere except the head. It was a risky process, since the paste burnt skin as well as hair and could leave them with scars, and arsenic is toxic, but it was an effective method. The neighboring Egyptians regularly shaved their heads to control lice, and it's reasonable to presume that they would shave other regions with dense hair for the same purpose. Ancient Egyptians were observant and intelligent, they certainly would've realized that it did them little good to keep the head clean if the nethers and pits were infested with parasites. And Egyptian culture developed thousands of years before anything else in the region. If we assign her a Greek identity, ancient Greek athletes participating in the Olympics would coat themselves in olive oil and scrape it off with a shell, capturing hair, sweat, dirt and oil for later sale as a perfume. They were also naked for all Olympic events, displayed their bodies for the crowd and for the gods, proudly, and both men and women participated. The oil accentuated their physiques, it mingled with their sweat and carried their odors when it was removed and was sold as a perfume. Roman gladiators, male and female, did this as well. For some of the free gladiators, it was an impressive source of income, as Roman citizens would pay well to smell like their favorite gladiator. There's an abundance of evidence of women in ancient times practicing full-body depilation, once you look beyond European history. In the general area where Amazonian mythology took root, it appears to have been relatively common. I don't think it's an unrealistic portrayal of Wonder Woman to show her without body hair, considering the cultures in question.

Exploration tips drop at the same rate from all ranks.

Click the blue Tsoo. Dialog will ensue.

I don't know what fun is. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel when I'm having fun. I can't even say that I've ever had fun, because there is no emotional dictionary I can reference to be sure. I can read about what other people feel when they're having fun, but I don't know what that really means for me because I have difficulty understanding things of this nature. I know what happiness is. It took me most of my life to identify that emotion, but I do understand it now. I know what fear is, that's something I was born with. But fun... that still eludes me. I know that things frustrate or anger me, and I know those aren't fun. I still do them, but I'm sure I'm not having fun. 19 mph movement speed isn't fun. Missing isn't fun. Being defeated isn't fun. Having to sit back and wait for a critter's god mode power to wear off so I can get the ever-loving fuck on with things... that's not fun. I know that some things make me laugh. Sending a low level critter flying with a strong KB power does that. I don't know if it's fun, though, because I don't know whether there's a line at which point amusement becomes fun, or where that line would be. If you're amused for 12 seconds, it's fun? Or is there an amusement meter, like the strength of the laughter, that defines it as fun? And I know that some things make me happy. My characters makes me happy. Having a build come together exactly as I envisioned it makes me happy. Finding just the right costume pieces to complete a look makes me happy. But happiness doesn't necessarily mean having fun. I don't think many people would define reading a textbook about nuclear physics as fun, but it does make me happy. I can't define fun for myself, so I don't try to define it for others. I keep playing because making and leveling characters is easier than writing, but still allows me to express my creativity sufficiently. I don't know if I'm having fun, but I am amused from time to time, I am happy to be playing this game again and I'm not so irritated by the annoying things that I feel a need to move on. I guess that doesn't really contribute much to what you're asking about. I'm not very good with people... not even myself. Still trying, though.

Puff, puff, pass, not puff, puff, post.

Defeating critters in zones in which you haven't acquired all of the exploration badges (not in instanced missions).

Only the effect applied from that source. It them from self-stacking their effects, that's all.

Probably an impressive sum. Strippers make good money. 😁

5/7 best movie ever.

He does. He keeps it in the basement vault of the 22nd National Bank, on Oak Street, in Paragon City. It's guarded by one Hero and several men armed with sub-machine guns. I sure hope no-one robs it.

I did it as a human-only peacebringer ~15 years ago. I think I was level 19 or 20. Stayed at range, kept moving and leaned heavily on Essence Boost.

It also disappears when deleting tip missions. I just move to another zone when it happens, it reappears that way.

Ignoring imbalances doesn't make creep less of a problem. There is a lack of parity between how Resistance and Defense function with debuffs in play, as you noted, and that disparity should be dealt with in order to properly moderate creep. Nerfing Defense won't change that, unless you nerf it drastically (or add new mechanics which allow debuffs to bypass Defense), to the point of gutting entire power sets, such as Energy Aura and Super Reflexes. Defense will always be superior in that regard unless and until Resistance offers comparable mitigation. By addressing that imbalance, setting a baseline across the board, we can find a fairer and more reasonable solution to creep than crudely hammering things until they conform.

Perhaps we should ask the HC team to look into coalescing various debuff resistances in the same way status resistances were, to bring parity to the Defense/Resistance discrepancy.

So everything is @Snarky's fault? That is a relief. I just spent the morning doing laundry naked and I was concerned that the apocalypse would be upon us before it dried. It wouldn't be proper to die without my clothes properly folded and stored.

Wait, something wasn't @Snarky's fault? That's it, we're doomed. The end of the world is upon us.

Full Auto has always been a narrow cone (20°). The range (80') hasn't been adjusted, either. According to the patch note archive on the wiki, the only changes done to Full Auto, from Issue 0 onward, were reductions in activation time (from 6s to 4s (January 22, 2009), then from 4s to 2.5s (April 20, 2021)). The sentinel version's range is reduced (40'), but it also has a significantly wider cone (90°).

The divorce papers are signed and in the mail.

Stop trying to sound mysterious, everyone knows it's because green fire lizards bred uncontrollably and were sent there to keep the rest of Pern from being overrun.

Yeah, having their bases made of chicken wire and sheet metal probably wasn't the best plan for aesthetics... or security... or impenetrability... but you know the janitor who finds all of the loose change under the floor has got to be the happiest employee in the world.

You're correct that there's a difference in quality, but from my perspective, it's not because the quality was bundled up and hidden away in villain arcs, it's because arcs written later in the game's life tend to be more interesting, more engaging and made better use of old mechanics while adding new ones. And those are available on both sides of the fence. Both sides have bad writing and good writing. Of the villain arcs which I've enjoyed, such as Leonard's, they're not notably better in any way, by any objective analysis, than some hero arcs, such as the Nance/Adair arcs, or the entirety of the revamped Faultline content. Contacts do send you to other zones, though. They don't typically send you on a looped zone crawl, this is true, but is it, in any way, better to be sent to zone A, then called back to zone C, only to be sent back to zone A (Hardcase, for instance)? It doesn't make any difference if you cut B out of the loop, you're still zoning multiple times. The gated contact system requiring X newspaper missions each time one wishes to unlock a contact also skews the metric, since you're obviously not going to be sent to a different zone while doing that. Even if you're using the contact finder to bypass the gate, you're still going to end up digging into newspaper missions to compensate for the paucity of arcs at certain points, and instead of running from zone to zone, you're running from mission door to mission door. If merits are your goal, you're going to be running even more, since villain arc rewards are atrocious and you're going to fill the gap with tip missions, which can and do send you to other zones. Time spent running is time spent running, and it doesn't matter whether it's to A/B/C/B/A, or A/C/A/A/C or A/A/A/A/A. I also dislike the basic concept of using newspaper missions as fillers between arcs because it acts against the narrative which would otherwise develop. As a hero, one can progress from one story arc to the next, and use story-related missions from contacts, to level all the way from 1 to 50+, and create a detailed and self-contained narrative without ever touching the police scanner, thus creating a complete personal story which neatly fits within the fabric of the overarching story. That's difficult to accomplish as a villain due to the comparative dearth of contacts and arcs, and the requirement that one supplements the journey with newspaper mission filler content. Hero journeys in this game are fully-fledged and -fleshed out Choose Your Own Adventure stories, while villain journeys, in my experience, are slapdash pastiches poorly stuck together with paper-mâché. Good writing, as I know it (at the risk of sounding immodest, I think I know it rather well), shouldn't be comparable to an empty piñata.

Converters aren't invention salvage. Different type of drop using different drop rules. Let's not make the answer to the question any more confusing than it already is.