Luminara

Note to self: avoid @Snarky's toilet.

TA/Dark defender holds up well against the EBs. Mummy can't be Immobilized, but Slows keep it out of arm's reach. Still a pain to whittle down. Werewolf is resistant to Immobilization, but I can stack enough to lock it down. Crone didn't even attack, just floated there, Immobilized, while I tore her apart. Reaper's not a threat. Haven't gotten a vamp to spawn, but since I'm at range, and loaded with AoE, his pet won't help him, and he's nothing without his pet. Not as fast as Grav/TA, no big attacks, no Containment, and a lot more running around to avoid the mummy's melee attacks, but these EBs aren't proving to be troublesome. I'll do Ill/TA this evening. That's my squishiest squishy, 100% dependent on PA to keep the damage off of her, so if there's going to be a stopping point, it should show up with that.

TA is, with the exception of EMP Arrow, entirely active mitigation. It's all clicks. No buff toggles, no click buffs, no PBAoE debuff/damage toggles. Ambushes are the counter to that, they can't be affected until they're present and in range. If you know they're coming, when they're coming, where they're coming from, and OSA isn't recharging, yeah, that works. The quickest recharge time I've managed with OSA is 39.1s, though, and when I use it, it's not behind me, it's in front of me. Bit difficult to drop OSA in two places at once, or drop it when it has 20s of recharge time remaining. And for Glue to be used to counter ambushes, again, you have to know they're coming, and know where they're coming from. Take that Vigilante morality mission which sends you after Ghost Widow, for example. Several of the ambushes in that mission spawn within tens of feet of your character, but they don't spawn from a specific point, so setting up a counter is flipping a coin and hoping that you win the toss. In the Cloud of Odorous Smoke tip mission, you might get lucky and have the Nictus spawn outside of the room with the seed carrier, potentially forcing them to cross a Glue patch to reach you, or you might have them spawn in the room, and there's no fixed point where that happens. Plus, if you're using /powexec_location target, there's no guarantee that either Glue or OSA will activate at all (might get Out of Range messages, even if they're in melee range), or that either will be effective (can spawn under the map, and when that happens, their effects aren't always applied to foes in the sphere). I pointed this out when the TA revamp was in beta. Ambushes are TA's weakness. Active mitigation requires activity, and activity requires targets, locations, strategic knowledge of enemy capabilities, line of approach, target vectors. In the past, TA had so many weaknesses that, while being ambushed was obviously one of them, the requirement to lean heavily on controls and multiple debuffs in every fight overshadowed its vulnerability to ambushes. The revamp improved TA's performance admirably, but in doing so, highlighted ambushes as its "hole". Every set has a "hole" of some kind. For instance, Rad, as powerful as it is, can be completely shut down with a single mez disabling the toggles and preventing the use of its heal. TA is less vulnerable to mez, but if you don't know when an attack is going to occur, or where it might come from, there's really not much you can do about it, except wait and hope you're not already engaged in combat and incapable of responding instantly. And, for whatever it might be worth, I approve of that. Everything should be countered by something. Ambushes counter TA. Obviously, ToTing is a different situation, but Slows don't do anything to prevent the Reaper from Fearing you (hm... have to take my Dark/Martial dominator back for another pass, see if i can Fear the Reaper), or the vampire from summoning his ambulatory Hershey bar, or the mummy from debuffing you, or the crone from toggling on Hurricane, et cetera. OSA is of absolutely no benefit with these EBs if one is "saving" it, it has to be used on every door because the spawns aren't predictable, which means you're waiting for it to recharge on most doors, slowing your progress considerably out of a desire to progress safely. I take the more reckless approach of knocking first, then using OSA if it's not trash or a treat. I'm just not going to wait ~20-30 seconds between doors.

I decided to take my Grav/TA controller on a round of ToTing this morning. That's something I'd been avoiding, as TA's weakness is ambushes and these are, in essence, triggered ambushes. Ambushes you can prepare for, but still ambushes. I expected that the first EB that spawned would flatten her in second, especially since my standard combat approach is to Wormhole everything to me, from a "safe" distance. The opening seconds were when I thought I'd encounter "make or break" situations, but it wasn't a problem. All of the EBs are susceptible to controls. The mummy takes the most stacking to lock down, but once it's done, there's no coming back. I didn't even have to look at Mr. Darkity Dark's Dark Servant. OSA, Fissure and Cross Punch kept it bouncing around and melted it like chocolate in a frying pan while I focused on the big guy. Those are the two which have proven to be the most trouble on my other characters. The other three were just target dummies. I'll test my Ill/TA and TA/Dark next. Those are now the ones with which I think I'm most likely to run into trouble.

They can be placed in salvage storage in bases.

Suggestions forum is -> that way. 😁

Ignore reduces the moderators' work load. And your blood pressure. Life's too short for them to work all of the time and us to die of... well, this.

I had a similar experience on my Kinetic/Willpower scrapper at 45. That mummy is not my friend. Had to remind myself that I have inspirations. Oh, look, that green one helped, now try a purple one!

I've been watching this trend develop, the accusations of conspiracy, the speculation that game changes are explicitly intended to force people out, that bug fixes are done exclusively for the purpose of ruining a few peoples' approach to playing, the unerring belief by the people making these statements that they are so incredibly important that everything just has to be targeted at them, that the only reason X change was made was to hurt them. Not for any other reason, but as an attack on them, personally, to drive them away. It makes absolutely no sense to anyone who spends a femtosecond pondering what's being said. Why would the developers spend three years making small changes to force anyone out when they could just make one change to nuke an activity or play style? Why would they have permitted those activities and play styles at all if they only intended to erode and destroy them over the course of years? How is it even possible to believe they're that sadistic and that good at planning out something that would take years to achieve, that they would do all of this in their free time, sacrifice their other hobbies and time with their families, just to rain on a few peoples' parades? Why would the closed beta be considered a huge secret, the foundation of a massive conspiracy to conduct development behind players backs, when the information on how to access it has been available since day 1, or anyone who wanted in could have just sent a PM to a developer? Why would anyone think that the people in the closed beta are rigging the vote, so to speak, to get these servers tuned to their preferences when they already have a server set up for their clique and don't want to play here? The HC team does something that benefits the majority of players, some of the few who aren't benefitted dump toxic shit on their lawns. The developers make a change which wouldn't even be known or noticed unless it's in the patch notes, self-proclaimed experts insult their intelligence and question their motives. The developers add something, some people who wanted something else go ape-shit. The moderators step in to pull a thread back on track or quell an argument and they're reviled, accused of supporting a hidden agenda, made scapegoats of those wild conspiracy theories. And anyone who tries to reason with these people is treated similarly. That's where the division in the community is coming from, the people who post as though they're certain that the members of the Homecoming staff and development team are "out to get them". "You only did this to kill farming!" "You deliberately made it impossible for me to get this MacGuffin!" "You want to stop me from playing my favorite content!" "You realigned the delta quadrifibrilator to synchronize with the lambda sequencer just to ruin my favorite power!" It's nonsense. Irrational nonsense coming from people who believe they deserve special dispensation. That they should be granted exemptions from changes to the game, and if they can't get that, the game should never change. That the game should never change at all, except the parts they want to be changed. That this game should be run, that development should proceed, that everything done should be in accord with their desires. That is what's causing problems within the community. That overwhelming attitude of entitlement. The freak-outs when a change to the game as a whole is regarded as a specifically targeted change to torment or ostracize them. The complete lack of compassion from the people who rail at the developers and moderators over shit in a video game, as though they weren't human beings, and then disappear without so much as a faintly muttered apology for over-reacting, until the next patch, when they come storming out to start lambasting everyone again, in an endless cycle of arrogance and abuse. That is not behavior appropriate of members of a community. Members of a community have to care about more than their own self-interest. To place others on the same footing they place themselves. To be willing to promote the well-being and happiness of all and take satisfaction in being part of something greater than themselves, even if their own gratification is delayed. People who lash out when they aren't given priority, who attack others when they don't get exactly what they want, who refuse to acknowledge that the developers and moderators can't satisfy everyone all the time and are doing their best, who take every fucking thing that the HC team does as a personal affront, those aren't members of a community, they're bad neighbors. I don't need to do any soul-searching. My conscience is clean. I'm not the one behaving like a spoiled adolescent, and I have no qualms about emphasizing the absurdity of that behavior. And it was hilarious.

Thanks. I copied it myself.

This, again?

Shield on a tank and scrapper, /Energy Aura scrapper, /Willpower brute/scrapper/sentinel, /Stone brute without Granite have all been solid for me against all of the EBs. I build heavy on Defense against Negative and Cold, though (hate ToHit debuffs and Slows), and these EBs appear to be skewed toward those attack types.

That's exactly what I just Tabbed out of the game to report. Guy was at a door near the one I clicked (gave him several doors' space to avoid potential conflict), fighting an Arisen Dickhead and Crone Matriarch, and when I clicked the door in front of me, another Arisen popped out right on top of the guy who was fighting the other two EBs. "My" Arisen aggroed on him like ticks on a hunting dog, it didn't come to me. Yes, I ran right over and helped deal with it. On a sentinel, though, I couldn't pull the aggro off of him, so he ended up tanking it, but I wasn't idle, I did my part. So, all of that now "solved", considering that we're now capable of spawning EBs right on top of other players, perhaps fixing that would be in order. I got lucky, the guy nearby was a melee character (Dual Blades, saw combo text going off), but the next one might be an unprepared controller, mastermind, et cetera. I can also see this being used as a griefing tool by less savory individuals, and when you're staring at a door or in the middle of a fight, you're not going to be looking around to catch names to be reported.

After much door clicking over the last few days, I can say with a high degree of confidence that the EBs don't like us, either.

None of these new critters seem to pose much threat to melee characters. Even my Ice/Willpower sentinel and Dark/Martial dominator don't have problems with them (because they're melee characters (yes, they are (i said yes, they are))). The most trouble I've had was running out of patience with the Ancient Dickhead who spawned a second Dark Ass-hat when a fight went on too long, the mummies having Irritate Player and seeming to be the most common spawn, and the particle count on the Hollow Reaper (particle slider at minimum, /priorityboost 1 and i'm still dropping to single-digit framerates when they lean in). If that had happened on one of my TA/* or */TA characters, though, I would've been pasted before I finished animating Flash Arrow. Would be a nice code variable to add for next year... IfMelee=Yes, SpawnMOAR.

Solo, Peregrine Island. I clicked on a door and... a Spectral Werewolf came up from behind me, followed by an Arisen Mummy, while a Crone Matriarch hung out in the street. As soon as I defeated the sneak attacking Spectral Werewolf, another Spectral Werewolf spawned and attacked. These weren't someone else's spawn. According to the spawn rules recently posted, ToT spawns aggro on the door clicker, and all four of these ass-hats came after me. They weren't following someone else and came close enough for Entropic Aura to Taunt them, they appeared on the street 50' away (Entropic Aura's radius is 8') and came running over to me. Not running after someone, they spawned in the street (i heard the Crone Matriarch's Hurricane activate behind me, which was why i turned around and saw the EB party starting) and ran straight to me. And there was no-one else running this ToT route, at least no-one I could see or hear (i pay attention to my surroundings when doing things in zones, i don't want to disrupt someone else's routine). Even if there had been, again, aggro rules for ToT spawns would've made it very unusual for those EBs to attack me instead of the door clicker... and even if the clicker somehow escaped the EBs and left them just within visual range of my character, there wouldn't have been that many EBs. One would be a possibility. Two, a stretch, but perhaps two "lucky" clicks in a row could do it. Three, all of which the clicker managed to evade and deposit behind me? That stretches credulity to the breaking point. AND all of the EBs stuck around long enough for me to defeat them (except the Crone Matriarch, because i forgot she was there, jumped onto the top of the building and Tabbed out of the game to write this. when i realized she'd followed me and was attacking, i Tabbed back and returned the favor, but she die-despawned before i finished her off). So clearly, all of these were my spawn, from that one door. They had to be, or at least two of them would've despawned before I got around to dealing with them (remember that the second Spectral Werewolf didn't even appear until i defeated the first one, and the Crone Matriarch just hung out, hovering above the street, doing nothing while i fought the Werewolves and Mummy). Something's fucky.