Luminara

Then the key to success is to spin Co*'s resurrection as NC's decision and effort. Face saved, management alive, corporate happy, gamers happy.

You do realize that -ToHit is almost identical to +Def (All (including Toxic, which has no Defense typing)), with the difference being the purple patch's effects on debuffs, right? By using Dark/Dark's -ToHit as mitigation, you're not actually avoiding Defense, you're just using a different version of it.

The legal budget available to the HC team for the purpose of negotiating a licensing or usage deal for the IP eight years after said IP was effectively killed is not even remotely related or comparable to the asking price of the IP if it were being sold outright. These two aren't the same and whatever figure NC put on the table previously has no bearing on the talks they're currently engaged in with the HC team's legal representation. And considering that the IP is essentially dead by NC's reckoning, they stand to lose nothing by agreeing to allow people to license it and potentially revive it. They do, however, face the prospect of gaining some small increase in their revenue stream, as well as reversing some of the ill will garnered when they shuttered the servers, which may lead to more revenue, and significant press coverage portraying them in a positive manner, which represents yet another potential revenue increase. These points have been made several times in this thread. The precedent was set decades ago. There are numerous "private" servers for various MMORPGs, some dead IPs, some still active IPs, and many of those some have been endorsed by the developers/publishers and allowed to continue. This isn't new ground we're talking about here, it's just another day on the Internet, and the examples set by other "private" servers can be used to indicate unspoken approval of the practice in a court. By knowingly continuing to allow these servers to operate without a license, NC is doing exactly that. If they were really serious about retaining private ownership of the IP, they would've acted immediately and continuously, driving a stake through the heart of every resurrection effort, rather than tacitly approving of the situation with their silence. Instead, they've permitted several Co* server groups to operate without a license for over 18 months, entered into negotiations for use and/or licensing of the IP with one of those server groups (Homecoming) and created the situation you claim will never happen, the potential for legitimizing the use of the IP. Here's a thought - if you're in the legal profession, instead of telling everyone to give up and let the game die, why don't you try to contribute something useful and worthwhile? Find some other precedents, a loophole in copyright law, something to help that might be passed on to the HC team's tiny legal staff. Do something positive to keep this game around if you have that capability and desire to see it thrive. All you've done so far is argue and insist that we're doomed. Do better.

Homecoming isn't big money. They don't have an on-staff legal team. They don't have hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars to throw at legal negotiations, filings and procedures. Legal matters are not going to move with the same speed or efficiency with the tiny budget they have.

The first attack, Throwing Knives, was at the hit rate cap, but any roll in the 95.01-100 range is a miss and the roll was 98.74, so it missed. The second attack, Blaze, had a lower hit chance, 87.00%, and it also missed when the roll came up higher than that number, 94.52. The streak breaker kicked in properly when you missed two attacks in a row and the lowest hit chance of the two was within the two miss allowance range, 80.01-90.00. Had that second attack had a 90.01% or higher hit chance, the streak breaker would've forced a hit, bypassing any result of the hit check. More information on the streak breaker and hit chance thresholds.

No idea. Never used it. On the original servers, I used Dark Mastery on my TA/Dark, so I could stack Dark Pit with Oppressive Gloom if I needed more mitigation. I've only played one character with access to a boost-type power, an Energy blaster, and after I started playing a Rad/Energy defender, I never leveled the blaster up high enough to play with that power. But if it worked before, it should work now.

/macroimage "TrickArrow_Stun" "EMP Arrow" "powexec_location me EMP Arrow"

I actually think it's reasonably well balanced. We're not playing the "one hero equals three +0 minions" game any more. The revamp didn't push TA to the point of violating any specialty set's schtick, it just brought the mitigation up to a reasonable level for a set without a heal, and the post-50 contribution up to roughly the same level as the other "good" sets. And as far as combat efficiency goes, TA's actually slightly weaker with Disruption Arrow and Entangling Arrow carrying the load. It used to be possible to briefly triple-stack Disruption, then pile Acid's -Res on top of that, so one could have ~5-6 seconds of 80% -Res out of every ~18 seconds, and potentially another 40% from procs in Acid and OSA. Now, we're hard-limited to 60%, plus procs. That's a good thing, in respect to keeping the set in check, ensuring that it's balanced in regard to other sets. TA, in and of itself, isn't god mode, it's just a better tool than it was. /macroimage "TrickArrow_Slow" "Glue Arrow" "powexec_location target Glue Arrow" or /bind key "powexec_location target Glue Arrow" Be aware that it'll be a little fidgety with that macro/bind. You'll target something 10' away and it'll sometimes give you an Out of Range denial. Have to manually target and fire when that happens. I don't like it much either, but it is what it is. We've endured worse, we'll adapt to this.

No. I don't farm. It's not my thing. I don't care for +X difficulty, it's not challenging to me, it's just slower and more tedious. I do like xX for the larger spawns, because that is my thing, seeing my cones hit target saturation and watching all of the pretty orange numbers floating up, the procs triggering, the critters keeling over before damage even registers on-screen... yeah. I can get that without farming, or +X. Farming was also one of the things that caused me to stop playing at the end of '11. I just couldn't do it any more. I'd farmed almost 15,000,000,000 inf* and I was still only... maybe 2/3 of the way to completion. I hit my limit and walked away. I'm not going down that road again. I was overjoyed when I discovered that Co* was alive again, I want to hold on to that, not reach a point of hating it again. I was farming +2/x6 on Liberty with my TA/Dark. I only had two or three purple sets, no PvP IOs, Winter IOs didn't exist, no +3 Def (All) IOs, none of the unique IOs or things we take for granted now... I still had the Fitness pool as selected powers, not inherent (i refused to respec once i had her build "perfect"), and I was farming for 4-6 hours every night at that difficulty setting, and it was so easy I'd fall asleep. I don't have to speculate that TA/Dark should be capable of running with the top dogs now, I already know it can because it was almost there when TA was considered one step above toilet fungus. TA is ten times better now, and IOs and sets are far easier to acquire. If TA/Dark isn't as good as it gets, it's damn close. If anything, the 10 target cap on TT and NF is going to be the primary limiting factor.

I've been helping a friend make pizzas for a two week event. We do everything on site, including baking the pizzas in a brick oven. We send them out in bread racks which came from... Bimbo Bakery. Dead serious. And that's why Jeremy Clarkson is one of my idols. ❤️ Maturity isn't recognizing whether something might be offensive to someone else, it's accepting that sometimes we're going to be offended and choosing to handle it like an adult, shrugging it off and move on. Offense taken is a personal thing, a perception of intentional attack or insult, not a socially defined phenomena. Society can't define anything as offensive to everyone because everyone is different. We choose, as individuals, whether to be offended, or not, by anything, and the world has too many people with too many different levels of tolerance for any one person's definition of what is or isn't offensive to be broadly applied. We all need to laugh at ourselves a little more and take things a little less seriously.

Lines had to be drawn somewhere.

PGA apparently still does, but it also has significantly higher base accuracy now, 112.5% (used to be 75%), and the pulses are frequently enough to practically guarantee that critters are affected. I used it extensively while I was leveling my Grav/TA to 40 (have to go back and finish her...) and was quite satisfied with how it worked in comparison to how it used to work. OSA has hit checks for the KD and damage, but it also debuffs Defense by 25% (that part is auto-hit), so it's quite reliable (note, though, that the KD chance is low, but checks are frequent, so it still tends to popcorn critters). Flash, Glue and Disruption are the only true auto-hit powers. Everything else has hit checks, but the critical ones, PGA and OSA, might as well be considered to be capped against anything +2 or below. I've never actually needed to slot OSA for Accuracy, and only slotted PGA with Accuracy as a side effect of using Call of the Sandman or Fortunata Hypnosis. You can always use Acid to debuff Defense and skip slotting Entangling, Ice and EMP with Accuracy/accumulating large amounts of global +Acc/+ToHit. Just be certain to slot Acid for Accuracy.

No. Back then, Blackstar had a total endurance crash, TA's damage mitigation was even worse than it was just before the revamp in this update (the Sleep in PGA was a one-shot effect, and had a hit check. most of the animation times were nearly a second longer, too), and after a year of farming, I still hadn't finished all of my purple sets, nor could I afford either of the +3 Def (All) uniques (3 billion apiece, and i had already sunk nearly 15 billion into the sets i had). I kept my distance from critters, and TT + Glue + OSA ensured that they kept their distance from me. Today, in the game as it is now, it might be viable, but it's not how I'll play Parthenia. She grew up as a purely ranged character, she'll continue as one. After spending two hours respecing, reslotting and testing this morning, though, I don't think I'm going to pursue Torrent. I was obliterating +0 spawns in half the time I expected, at level 20. Even Yellow Ink Men weren't a threat to me, and this build is barely on the cusp of getting started. I tested the snipe changes (not recent, but new to me) with Moonbeam and was absolutely delighted with the result, and since there are always lieutenants and bosses in need of a good spanking, I can use that to fill the 0.786s gap in my TT/NF chain. Dropping Torrent from the planned build allowed me to reconfigure with Leadership instead of Concealment, five-slot Tactics with Adjusted Targeting and pick up another 5% global +Recharge, and have a solid ToHit buff much sooner than when I'd planned (level 41, Focused Accuracy). I can even switch Life Drain's slotting from 5x Panacea to 5x Regenerative Tissue, give up 2.5% of the 5% I gained and exchange it for another 6% +Movement Speed, pushing me up to 63.87 mph with Hurdle. Soft capped Defense in conjunction with gobs of -ToHit, perma-Hasten, a giant mechanical spider, ~3.5 net endurance gain with toggles active, and the fastest Hurdler I've ever made? That puts me in my happy place. Ooo... I just had a thought. Mids' time!

Pet Damage Inflicted channel.

My main on Liberty for years. I've been distracted with my Sisters project, and waiting for the TA revamp to go live, so she's only at level 20 here. It's glorious. All AoE, all of the time, and with the continuing stacks of -ToHit from /Dark, incredibly safe. I have builds for numerous TA characters, from all four relevant archetypes. But my builds are all designed to fit my preference for using Hurdle as a travel power and would require more than a little retooling to fit other peoples' uses, so I haven't posted any of them. Really, though, the only thing anyone needs to make a great TA/Dark is this advice - slot Tenebrous Tentacles for range. Two Centrioles and a +5 Damage/Endurance/Range if you want TT's base damage output, or just two +5 Range if the damage is too low for you to care about, and pack the rest of the slots with procs. Matching TT's range with Night Fall's allows you to use NF from the same distance as TT without moving, which is the key. Using NF at TT's base 40' range really makes it difficult to hit the 10 target cap due to the narrow width of NF's cone. Using NF at max range makes it much easier to nail everything. And not having to jitter back and forth to make it all work turns it from a potentially annoying combination to a really good one. Slot NF with procs, too. Even with low chances of triggering, you're still working with 6 procs between the two cones, and ~10 targets. They'll fire frequently enough to make it worth the investment. As a bonus, two of the procs which can be slotted in both TT and NF are Energy and Fire damage, so you'll almost never have to ignite OSA with another attack. Flash the spawn, drop OSA and Disruption, then start chaining TT and NF, and watch everything melt. That was how I farmed +2/x6 with Parthenia, back on Liberty. I'm going to experiment with Torrent here, now that there are KB -> KD enhancements, so I can see if I can add a third cone to the rotation. Even with Hasten, there's a gap when using TT and NF as an attack chain, and I'd like to close that gap.

I haven't encountered this issue, but I'm only using it on one character currently, experimenting with it as a replacement for Combat Jumping, and experimenting to see how well it works in conjunction with movement. I use /bind button4 "powexec_location camera:max Combat Teleport", pop up on balconies, onto the platform at tram stations, etc. I was fiddling with it in Brickstown a couple of nights ago, used it to 'port through those annoying pipes in the lower level of the zone, just west of The Crescent (where it drops down and has a badge and a few mission doors behind large pipes and a low brick wall), and I went straight through.

Or by raising market tax on listings/sales. Or by removing SOs and basic IO recipes from the game. Or any of a number of other ways, almost all of which will do little more than enrage a lot of people. P2W powers are optional. No-one is forced to take them, and no-one is abnormally affected by the inf* removed from the game when they're purchased. And yes, the inflationary control they provide is necessary, because, as I just said, they're one part of a larger whole.

In a vacuum, no. In concert with other taxes, it's part of a whole. Remove one part and you change the dynamics of the whole. Money can't be generated out of thin air and expected to retain its value unless something is removing money from circulation. A single something is not a viable solution because it can be avoided, sidestepped or ignored, and it can never be large enough to do fulfill the intended purpose without creating strife and discord. Multiple somethings are necessary. P2W transport powers having a cost and players being encouraged to pay that cost if they want to supplement LRT, and having the inf* spent on them evaporate into thin air, is one of that multiple. All of the inf* sinks working in concert are the inflationary control, not any single sink by itself. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Not even imaginary economies.

Do not listen to @EmmySky. Stay out of the water. Don't trust her, she eats pineapple pizza and she's trying to feed you to her pet piranhas. Oh, and welcome home.

Those numbers were for a single server, not all five, and not for the entirety of the HC server group's existence. It isn't trivial, and the longevity of the game is the bigger picture. I'm sure @SwitchFade would be delighted to explain the benefits and methodology of controlling inflation, if you'd prefer to hear this from someone with a degree.

*starts packing for the vacation in @Frostbiter's back yard* I WILL HAVE MY PERFECT CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR!

Beat you to it! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Flash Arrow doesn't have a hit check. Give it a ToHit Debuff, Recharge Reduction or Endurance Reduction.

My main is a Staff/Willpower brute. It was the only way I could fool the universe into buffing TA, making it think I gave up.

It's fine. Someone will always be miffed by choices they wouldn't make, but it's not common here. Most people agree that we should all be allowed to play what and how we choose. Nope. Despite all of my number crunching and mechanical knowledge, I've never actually spent any time looking at endurance usage, recovery and play style choices which affect these things. I go by feel, and wait until I'm at 50 with a character to determine whether I have "enough" recovery. That said, I also make it a point to slot all of my toggles for Endurance Reduction as much as possible, and use IO sets or frankenslot IOs, so my other powers are typically manageable. I go by feel. If it feels good, it's good. Either is fine. If you're not going to be tanking AVs and GMs, a single -KB IO is going to be sufficient for almost everything you do, and can save you both a few power selections and slots. Toggle on Combo Level 3 and Form of the X, then hover your pointer over the affected powers (Eye of the Storm and Sky Splitter) and look at the effects in the info panel.