Luminara

DS9, Season 1, Episode 19 - Duet. This is when I fell completely in love with the show. This episode. Summary follows: I was hooked at that moment. The acting, the character development, the intensity of the stories... DS9 did everything right. It didn't always have great writing, amazing acting, perfect stories, but it was always better than anything else that was on. And no, it wasn't Roddenberry's Trek. Roddenberry's Trek portrayed people as perfect most of the time, and as inspiring as it might have been, it's hard to see ourselves in those shoes. We aren't perfect. We aren't angels. We can't relate easily to that. DS9 showed people as they were, and as they wanted to be (Roddenberry's idealistic representation), without glossing over the flaws and character defects, and that made it accessible to everyone. It made it relatable. It was honest about people. It acknowledged that people are flawed in so many ways, but it also showed that in trying to meet that ideal, in struggling with ourselves, with our demons, with others, and constantly trying to meet expectations we know we can't hope to achieve, that's when we become better people. That's DS9. That's what made it the best Trek.

If you voted for proper pizza, without pineapple, you would've been authorized to use a montage from a good Rocky film. 😛

I do. I created a similarly restricted character in Issue 5. Don't waste time on Acrobatics. Stuns and Sleeps are far more common than Holds, and you'll have protection from neither. That was one of the problems I ran into, and why I eventually respeced out of Acrobatics and changed tactics. Your best anti-mez is going to come from Air Superiority or Rune of Protection. Air Superiority is Knock Up, and it's not a chance for KU, it's guaranteed (barring KU protection and animation issues, both of which occasionally occur). Put the mezzer on its ass and keep it there, and it can't mez you. Of course, you can't do that with Air Superiority alone. Even if you drop the recharge time low enough to spam it, it doesn't override its own animation, so it won't knock a critter up when it's in the process of being knocked up or standing up. You need to chain it with one or more other attacks, and you need to use it at appropriate intervals, meaning, when the critter is back on its feet. Rune of Protection is complete protection from status effects, but it's on a long click timer. It can't be made permanent. Best you can likely hope for is about 50% up time, but if you proceed slowly, or use it as an always-available Break Free, and don't deliberately push up the difficulty so you're facing multiple mezzers in every spawn, you should be fine with it. Barring either of those options, the Presence Pool has two Fears; the Fighting pool has Boxing and Cross Punch, both of which have a chance to Stun; and the Force of Will pool has a couple of powers with chance for KB. Stacking your own mez is just as effective as having status protection, and if your primary/secondary offers anything useful, you can leverage that in conjunction with pool options. Building up massive +Def also works, if you're using IO sets, and with several pool powers offering +Def, it's reasonably easy to make it work, especially if you're layering it with -ToHit (which is in Weaken Resolve, a Force of Will pool power). When you make it to 35+ and can start looking at *PPs, you'll have additional options. More mez of your own, more soft control, more +Def, et cetera, and might be able to redesign your character around that. Lastly, learn which mechanics you can abuse. Powers which cause critters to scatter, like Caltrops, to make one example, can prevent mez simply by keeping the mezzer occupied with running away.

The writing is supposedly better on the other side, so people play villains. That doesn't make them villains, or villainous, merely discerning. Also, I play heroes, and I'm nice. Ish. Look, my cats like me, so shut up. 😛

By examining the way it interacts with other powers and determining whether the cost is worth the investment. Sometimes one or the other is perfect. Sometimes one has better stats, but doesn't bring anything particularly useful. Sometimes neither is worthwhile. It's not what any one power does in, of and by itself, but what it does in conjunction with other powers. If the T1 is "bad", I flip the primary/secondary and look at it from the other archetype. Trick Arrows is, obviously, going to be my example. I've never been a fan of Entangling Arrow. I'm still not a fan of it, even with the shiny new 20% -Res added in I27. It's just not a compelling power for me. So I typically skip it if I can. It's one of the reasons I rarely play corruptors - I love TA, but I don't love everything in TA, and I don't want to be forced to waste a power selection on something I won't use. I'm probably not representative of the majority, but I just don't like powers which are designed only to be used in extreme emergencies or once in a blue moon. That's what most T9 powers have been, historically, and I've rarely bothered with them. Some T9s, I will take. EMP Arrow. Rain of Arrows. Some, I never take and never regret skipping, like scrapper and brute T9s. I can always find another way to do what I want to do. Does it do something contrary to what I intend to do with this character? Knocking foes out of patches, for example, or DoTs which break Sleeps when Sleeps are my primary form of damage mitigation. Does it do something that another power does, but not as well? Then it's probably not worth using. Does it fit into the attack chain? If it's an attack that doesn't actually serve a purpose, or throws off the flow of the chain, it might be better left unselected. Do I have to build in a special way to make this power viable? Sometimes a power looks really good, until you realize you have to redesign your entire character to make it work, or slot your powers in ways you'd rather not. Is it necessary? Often, we consider something appealing in the planner, but when we finalize our character at 50 and start looking at it again, we realize it serves no purpose, or offers nothing compelling. But, really, only you can decide if any power is worth it or not. Sometimes, the animation alone makes a power worth having. Sometimes, powers are worthwhile as IO set mules. Sometimes, we just like to have a power "just in case". Sometimes, we take a power we don't need and never intend to use, because we're fond of it. Pick what you like. Respec later if you want or need to. The worst that can happen is that you learn a little more about the game, what you like, what you need and what you can do.

A video game originally designed to allow players to vicariously experience being a superhero was always going to appeal to a specific subset of the population. Guardians of the peace. Defenders of justice. Protectors of the innocent. Promoters of equality. It stands to reason that the forums would reflect that.

Several months and pages of discussion, and only a couple of brief DS9 mentions and side conversations. YOU ARE ALL DISAPPOINTMENTS TO ME AND YOUR OTHER PARENTAL UNIT.

Do you see this, boys and girls? This is your brain on pineapple pizza.

Any attempts to stage a coup d'état in my Lumiverse will result in having the walls of reality collapsed on and about your head. Now remove yourself, and your gastronomical horrors, from your cubicle. And you just lost your severance pay.

You're both fired. SECURITY! Escort these people from the building.

Keep up, slowpokes. 😛

It's bad in Croatoa. Striga wasn't much better. I think tweaking powexec_location to raise the target location slightly above ground level would probably fix that issue, as well as others reported when using other powers with the command.

The fuckiness to which I was referring was the DDoS activity, which was definitely occurring.

4/6 Clouded Senses and 18% +Def, or 4/6 Dark Watcher's Despair and 16% +Def is all that takes. Combat Jumping/Hover + Weave + both 3% +Def (All) IOs nets you everything you need to complement Flash Arrow. But that really emphasizes what I'm saying - 18% isn't much without Flash Arrow, and if you're waiting for Glue or OSA to recharge, you're going to see a lot more incoming damage when that ambush comes waltzing up from behind, intent on giving you a thorough physical by removing your organs and checking them visually. TA is pro-active, not reactive or passive, which creates the mechanical hole that other sets don't experience. They have heals, they have toggles which persist on defeated foes, they have PBAoE Defense/KB/whatever, they have reactive and passive options which help them mitigate damage even when they aren't actively aware of or countering it. TA is definitely not overpowered. As long as we're weak to ambushes and summons, we'll never have to worry about nerfs. The debuff values of every power could be quadrupled and we'd still have that the potential to be squashed like insects on a windshield by an ambush or a critter summoning reinforcements while our key powers are recharging. Us knowing how to manipulate the game to make TA perform well doesn't equate to TA performing above standard, or above the HC team's expectations.

This was followed by a redirect to a Captcha page. Definitely some fuckiness occurring.

Heh. Parthenia's +Def is shit. I refuse to build for soft-capped Def and maxed -ToHit at the same time, it renders one or the other pointless, and I refuse to allow Flash Arrow to be pointless. I play TA to use TA powers, not to have a bunch of mules for set bonuses so I can run around not using TA powers. +Def, for me, on my TAs, is extra, not a primary goal. Just enough to close the gap between Flash Arrow's debuff and the soft cap, and no more. That allows me to build more well-rounded characters and pursue set bonuses I want, rather than spending my entire slotting budget on mitigation and leaving them weak in a wider variety of ways. I'm perfectly comfortable with TA having a weakness, and having to live with that weakness in order to build my characters the way I envision them, because I spent years dealing with multiple TA weaknesses and having to find ways to compensate for them. I just wanted to point out that TA is not god mode, that it does have a hole, just like everything else in the game. That hole is with certain mechanics, rather than damage types or positions, but it's no less a limiter than other holes in other sets. If anything, it adds to the game, expanding on what we define as a weakness/hole, and offers the potential for future sets with similarly unconventional weaknesses.

Forums were as slow as a standard mid-day for me, at 4 a.m. this morning, which was abnormal. Nothing unusual in my latency in the game, so it wasn't on my end, or, for a change, Verizon being the king dick of the universe. Then a DDoS prevention screen from the server came up when I refreshed one of my open forum tabs a few minutes ago, and several pop-up post peeks just say "there was a problem displaying this" or something when I hover over posts. DDoS seems most likely, given that page that came up. Questions are, who and why?

Glue Arrow's pseudo-pet disappears at the 30s mark. The patch persists for the full 60s duration, but there's no visual indicator that the patch is there after 30s. When using Glue Arrow with powexec_location target, the pseudo-pet typically spawns under the terrain when the power is used at any elevation above whatever the current map defines as 0'. This causes Glue Arrow to appear on the ground, for example, when the player tries to use it on a balcony or elevated platform. When used in large outdoor maps with hills, it goes under the ground and only affects foes half of the time (presumably, it's falling all the way down to the "bottom" of the map).

Regarding the potential for TA being overpowered with the revamp: Ambushes. I've been running the Croatoa arcs for the last few nights and run into several situations which led to my defeat. A single ambush neuters my TA/Dark more effectively than mez. I either can't debuff everything quickly enough to save my skin, or the ambush spawns are too scattered to debuff fully. Buck Salinger's arc is particularly brutal, with hidden Red Cap ambush spawns, multiple ambushes when objectives are triggered... I just /quit in fury, my head aching from grinding my teeth and blood pressure skyrocketing, after yet another series of ambushes put me face down. TA, in and of itself, is extremely good now when the player is in complete control of the battlefield. That can change in a heartbeat. The moment an ambush spawns, the tables turn and you're in trouble. And summons which occur after you've debuff, like Red Caps or Council critters despawning and summoning a higher-tier foe, like a Fiend or Warwolf boss, or summons like Master Illusionists calling up their Illusionists, are in the same category as ambushes. Your "my ToHit debuff is HUGE, son" Flash Arrow doesn't apply to those because they didn't exist at the time you used Flash Arrow. Your PGA might have expired by the time they pop. You have a split second to react, then the pain comes rolling over you if you were a little too slow on the draw. Ambushes (and post-debuff summons) are TA's weakness, and they're a devastating weakness because TA is still reliant on both recharge times and player reaction. Even if you're maintaining perfect awareness of your surroundings, you're at the mercy of having key powers recharged, you're reliant on being mobile and capable of responding to sudden changes, you're even limited in how you can counter an ambush by where it's coming from (does no good to have a Glue patch or OSA down in front of you, where you're fighting the existing spawn, if the ambush comes from behind and you can't reposition yourself). As long as there are ambushes and critter summons in the game, TA will never be overpowered.

You get used to it. You also get scars. Chicks/dudes dig scars. "Yeah, this one is from the Battle of Caphalos Five. This one is from when I was held captive by Orritez, Butcher of Aritax. And this one, a chainsaw jumped me. Oh, that one? Ginger. I was certain I was done for that time, with the water torture and all. She loved me in the end, though." 👍

Do that. Contain the mess with a tray of some kind under the bowl. Jessica plays with water, she paws when she's drinking, moves the water bowl halfway across the cabin sometimes with her antics, it's just normal behavior for her. If it's normal for Ginger, then taking away the ability to play water or paw at it while drinking will create stress. If it's not normal, it will resolve itself over time, when she's more comfortable in her new home, and you can remove the tray then. Either way, the simplest solution, that of containing the mess with a tray, is the best. If you don't have a cookie sheet, sheet tray, serving tray or wide, shallow dish in which to set the water bowl, try putting it in the sink. She'll find it.

Sext with your phone next time, the screen can be squeegeed.

The tier 1 and 2 attacks, Aim and tier 9 attacks, all of which can be directly compared, are identical in animation times. Umbral Torrent has a lower target cap than Fire Ball (10 versus 16), but the same animation time. Tenebrous Tentacles is over a second faster than Fire Breath. There are no Dark powers which can be directly compared to Blaze or Rain of Fire. Blaze has a 1.188s animation time, Rain of Fire's is 2.244s. Dark has Abyssal Gaze with a 1.848s animation, and Life Drain, 2.112s animation time. I think Dark's snipe is ~0.4s faster than Fire's, but I can't log in to check. If Moonbeam isn't faster, it's identical to Blazing Bolt.

Everything above +0 resists all varieties of debuffs. The greater the level differential, the stronger the resistance. At +4, critters resist debuffs by more than half. So yes, and no. There aren't very many foes which specifically resist -ToHit, primarily AVs/scaled down EBs, but fighting enemies above your current level causes your debuffs to have less effect. More information on debuff resistance due to level differential. Also of note, a few power sets have the capability to debuff -ToHit resistance (this was added to Trick Arrows in the most recent update), but all lieutenants, bosses and AVs/scaled down EBs have limits to how much their resistance to -ToHit can be debuffed. Consequently, debuffing resistance to -ToHit is of limited value outside of AV fights. One can debuff minion/underling -ToHit resistance significantly, but the time spent doing so is rarely worthwhile when it's simpler and quicker to just beat the snot out of them. Well, +Def is never comprehensive, covering all types and positions. Most Defense is mitigation to either positional attacks or attacks with specific damage types. There are +Def (All) powers, which do exactly that, provide Defense to all positions and damage types, but even +Def (All) doesn't provide any Toxic Defense because there isn't any Toxic Defense in the game. -ToHit, on the other hand, affects every attack and every damage type used by the debuffed foe, which makes it far more effective as a mitigation tool. With -ToHit, there is no Psi hole, or Toxic hole, or any hole. -ToHit bypasses all of that, granting mitigation to every type and position equally. If it weren't for the purple patch, -ToHit would be absolutely superior to +Def in all situations. Even with the purple patch, -ToHit is excellent mitigation, but most players prefer passive mitigation in the form of toggles/set bonuses, rather than active mitigation which potentially interferes with their dee pee ess. I can't address the value of -ToHit or +Def in Hami raids. I don't attend them and I haven't researched Hami's mechanics since Paragon updated it. I'll get around to it eventually. Dark Blast is an excellent set, for defenders and corruptors. Blasters lose access to Night Fall, which significantly reduces the value of the set, in my opinion. Being limited to mostly single-target attacks makes it much more difficult to stack -ToHit on multiple foes, which reduces the mitigation it could provide. But if you're comfortable with limited AoE options, it can provide plenty of -ToHit to layer with +Def, even accounting for blaster debuff scalar values. With Umbral Torrent to back it all up with reliable KB (or KD with a KB->KD IO), it should turn the tables on the Psi critters for you. Fire, though... you really have to pair it with something which provides more mitigation than /Devices, or go all out and take every high damage power you can so you can obliterate spawns before they can hit you. Fire's only bonus effect is MOAR DAMAGES NAO PLZKTHXLOL. Damage is mitigation, but it has to be quickly delivered and in sufficient amounts to defeat everything before you're defeated, or it doesn't do the job. For controllers, try /Trick Arrows. I rather enjoyed my Fire/TA controller on the original servers, and with the improvements to TA in the latest update, it's undoubtedly an even better combination than it was then. Between Smoke and Flash Arrow, you can build up over 30% -ToHit when slotted, and that's enough for you to soft cap versus +0 critters with only 15% Defense (All). 6% of that can come from the two 3% +Def (All) unique IOs. Maneuvers offers 4% slotted. You can find more +Def in a variety of powers and set bonuses, and one of the Interface options in the Incarnate system also adds -ToHit to every attack (including your pets'). Oh, and /TA also has two powers which debuff Defense, so you'll see fewer miss streaks in the long run.