Luminara

That's right, I don't. And why don't I speak for you? Because when I was working as your PR representative, you tried to pay me with smooth contemporary jazz CDs and dead frogs you found on the road. Every other vampire in history has amassed uncountable wealth, and you're trying to pay your bills with autographed photos of William Shatner (topless, whatever that's about) and bendy straws. When you stop being a cheapskate, I'll stop not speaking for you. 😛

Do you know what else is in the spirit of the season? Forgiveness. It's not going to kill any of us to clean up a stray present spawn here and there, or go around them on the way to the next present, and the people who abandoned the spawns didn't do so with malicious intent, they were just excited and a little irresponsible. Be joyful that we have presents to open and leftovers to be upset about, think charitable thoughts for those who don't clean up after themselves and get on with the business of being cheerful and enjoying the event.

Compensation for shaving the rest of it off.

Already in the costume editor, no unlock required. Santa Gloves and Santa Boots.

Rad/Rad Paragon Protector Elites. -Regen, -Recharge, -Movement Speed (Lingering Radiation, 30s duration... and 25s recharge time), -Defense (10-30% with every successful attack), -Resistance and -Damage (toggle). I fight everything, and this is the one thing I don't like to fight. Those PPD ED-209 dicks with their choke and puke patch that ignores status protection are a very, very close second.

A habit I've developed while playing is to stop in a mission when I notice a problem with a build, open the Enhancement screen and Tab out of the game to fiddle with Mids'. My endurance usage is higher than I like, I'm not convinced that my attack chain is right, I'm taking more damage than I believe I should be, the usual reasons to go on a tweak-fest. I Tab back in to see if I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, or to try changes to the build which don't require a respec, like swapping enhancements between two comparable powers, or removing a power from my attack chain and trying a different rotation, then I Tab back to the planner and tug at the threads some more. I can burn several hours adjusting and changing things, and be Tabbed out of the game for 30-60 minutes at a stretch. I do it this way because it makes the entire process of revising a build more dynamic than would otherwise be. The things that drive me to revise a build aren't things I can see in Mids', or with a 5 minute sojourn on the test server, they're unveiled over time, over levels, as I play, and being able to Tab in and out at my discretion really makes a difference in getting the final product where I want it to be.

No-one's buried on my land. I have two dozen cats, and a black bear I'm trying to befriend. We don't waste food out here.

I don't make the decisions, I don't make the changes, I just accumulate knowledge and disseminate it. Take it up with the PvP players.

There was a 13% reduction in endurance costs across the board when ED was implemented. Stamina was made inherent in Issue 19, then made available at level 1 three Pages ago. SOs drop and can be purchased at level 1. Set IOs are no longer the bailiwick of the fabulously wealthy elite. We have numerous additional tools for managing endurance which didn't exist, or didn't exist in a widely usable form on the original servers, like the Survival amplifier (1000 inf* for one hour at level 1, stacks to eight hours). Endurance management doesn't need to be addressed, people need to use the tools available. It's so much easier now to maintain a full blue bar, even at starter levels, that reducing endurance costs would be comparable to removing the endurance mechanic entirely... at which point we're throwing balance in the trash and handing players unlimited power. I doubt that will happen on these servers. Endurance management is part and parcel of the game's design and balance. It always has been and always will be because it's one of the few constraints which prevent players from being omnipotent. New players will learn, just as we all have, and they will be better players for having done so, just as we all are.

Leveling the playing field. If Player A comes into a PvP zone loaded with several million inf* worth of temp powers and Player B has none, it's not an even fight. With zone-only powers, there's an assurance of parity in what's available to each player. There's no guarantee that both players will purchase the temp powers offered in PvP zones, but at least the player who doesn't isn't at a massive disadvantage.

Buy the Jaunt Initializer power from the merchant in Siren's Call. It's PvP-only Teleport with 5 uses for 10,000 inf*. Then go to Warburg and use that to TP to the badge. That's how I did it.

The same argument can be applied to every power set. Unless you're proposing a complete game redesign to remove the necessity to hold on to unused powers from primaries and secondaries as well as pools, it's an argument that can't be supported. The Fighting pool isn't special, the requirement to take and ignore a power in order to gain access to one or more other powers isn't unique to the Fighting pool, and unless this change is universally applied, including primaries and secondaries, it's not warranted. It's all or nothing. If the Fighting pool is "fixed" in this manner, then everything has to be changed in the same way. And then we're one short step away from T9s at level 1, ludicrous tank-mage builds and throwing in the balance towel.

Rain of Arrows is 1.0 Accuracy, 75% chance to hit +0 foes. Full Auto is 1.35 Accuracy, 101.25% chance to hit +0 foes. Full Auto has a 10% chance to deal bonus damage... though, looking at the CoD page, that may be bugged, since the chance occurs at 3.3s and the duration of the power is only 2.64s. That should be tested. Rain of Arrows doesn't have any bonuses... it doesn't even have Archery's +Acc, or a basic +Acc for being a weapon attack. Full Auto recharges in 60s, Rain of Arrows recharges in 65s. Full Auto's DoT is a single attack, it makes one hit roll for all DoT ticks on an enemy. Rain of Arrows makes a separate hit roll for each tick. Full Auto's 20 degree cone is 80' in length, giving it a 25.038' width at 71', comparable with Rain of Arrows' 25' radius. At 80', the width is 28.212', and since extending a cone's length widens its terminal width, it benefits from a wider terminus when enhanced for Range (a single +0 Range SO, for example, would increase the length to 96' and the terminal width to 33.855'), whereas Rain of Arrows is locked at 25'. Mids' database hasn't been properly updated in years, and it doesn't look like it ever will be at this point. Use City of Data for accurate power information. Because they're both cones. Ranged cones are capped at 10 targets. Powers were standardized in this manner when the aggro and AoE caps were introduced in Issue 5, and Full Auto wasn't limited to 10 targets because it recharged too quickly, it was limited because it's a ranged cone.

In the Mass Effect continuum, biotics refers to abilities powered by Element Zero in a person's tissues. A biotic character can create and control fields which alter gravity and mass, allowing them to fashion projectiles of warped space-time, erect barriers, create small black holes, lock enemies in stasis fields, and more. It's super-science wizardry. It's also insanely fun. Think Warshade with combos that deal extra damage, impose -Res and make Hellion Golf look like putting 6".

It's 80' Stealth with a model-specific costume (Huntsman male /Night Widow female /Crab Spider huge). It can be acquired multiple times by accepting Agent G's mission, abandoning it and accepting it again (the power isn't deleted when the mission is abandoned). Each time it's re-acquired, it adds 1 hour of duration, up to 2.5 hours maximum (game time, not real time, so the timer isn't ticking when the character is logged out). That's it. It's just "free" Stealth for 1-2.5 hours, and it works anywhere and on anything that doesn't ignore Stealth. I played around with it while leveling up a few characters, but I didn't like the toggle cost. Similar powers are Midnight Visage (50' Stealth) and the Chameleon Suit (1000' Stealth). https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.arachnos_disguise https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.midnight_visage https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.freakshow_disguise

The Sinatra version of this song is eerily appropriate here... Here we are, as in olden days. Happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us, Gather near to us, once more. Through the years, we all will be together, If the fates allow. Hang a shining star upon the highest bough, And have yourself a merry little Christmas now. Merry Christmas to you, too, @High_Beam. Merry Christmas to all of you, today and every day.

None of the activities associated with running a tip mission (opening Contacts, selecting Tips, selecting the specific tip... everything involved with selecting and running a mission, including exiting the mission and closing the mission completion dialogue window) created the invisible window. I also allowed myself to be defeated once to bring up the rez dialogue, and leveled up (veteran level 44), still no invisible window. Zoning via transit hub (Rogue Isles ferry, in this test) doesn't create the invisible window. It's not caused by entering a base, opening a vendor window, opening the salvage window, opening the Incarnates window, entering and immediately exiting the Enhancements screen, opening the recipes window or accessing a crafting station, opening enhancement/salvage/inspiration storage in a base, opening the merit vendor window, opening the ID or personal info windows, the combat attributes windows (the sticky one at the top left or the main window), the Clues or Find Contact windows, nor the Options window. Not a result of staying in the Enhancements screen for six minutes, or exiting a base. Abandoning a mission doesn't cause it. Drops and getting a tip doesn't do it. It's not pseudo-pets, this character has two (Ice Storm and Blizzard). E-mail usage, claiming account items, nope. Camera angle, orientation and zoom don't create the invisible window. Selecting a newspaper mission, abandoning it and selecting a new newspaper mission didn't do it. Earning a badge doesn't cause it. /respec didn't do it, but I backed out immediately. A full respec needs to be investigated, but I don't have any respecs planned for any of my characters at the moment, so that will have to wait. AH HA! I tested logging out to the character selection screen, and on the character I logged in to, the invisible window is there. Logging back out to the character selection screen and back into the character I was previously playing, the invisible window is there. That's it. It's caused by switching characters. I exited the game entirely, restarted the client and logged into a character. There was no invisible window. I logged out to the character selection screen and logged back into the same character, and the invisible window was there. Switching characters is what creates the invisible window in the center of the screen. It's either the logout window itself not properly terminating, or a hidden window created specifically for some purpose, though I can't fathom why switching characters would need an invisible window always active. Wish @Faultline were around to dig into the code and figure out what's going on.

It's not part of the character hit box or model, it's a window. Easiest and simplest way to see the same effect is to open a mission acceptance window or /ah, then open the badge window. With the badge window on top, the exact same behavior occurs, tooltips failing to display where it overlaps the other window. There's an invisible, non-interactive window that sits in the center of the screen... but as I note in my last post, it's not always there, something creates it. Some activity or action. It's not present upon logging in, something we do creates it, and once it's created, it persists for the remainder of that gaming session.

Now this is interesting. I just logged in to check the progress of a day job on my Ice/Willpower sentinel, and the dead zone isn't present. New question on my mind is what makes that region of the screen dead. It's not Alt+Tab, so we can strike that one off of the list. Going to test this...

In the region I've outlined in red, tooltips don't display. There's an invisible window blocking mouse interaction with the badge window. The placement of that invisible window is interesting, dead center of the screen. Wonder what it is and why it's there at all, since it's not interactive.

This times infinity. Low hit chance is the real cause of endurance management problems. Missing forces the player to use more attacks, more attacks use up more endurance, and more endurance per attack than all the toggles a character has active.

From the other end of the perspective spectrum: My mother would start decorating right after Halloween. Splashes of red and green everywhere, that canned snow stuff frosting the windows, garlands of gold and silver strewn around. Christmas music played constantly for months. Family tree tinseling and ornament hanging, and nothing came down until the tree was shedding needles faster than she could vacuum them up. She never put up a single decoration outside, everything was always indoors. Christmas was in her heart, and her home was her heart. We were poor, so it wasn't about presents and fancy displays for other people, more about feeling Christmas for as long as possible. That was usually about six months. When the inevitable time came to put everything away, we took the tinsel off of the tree and saved it (i said we were poor), boxed everything up and moved it to the shed, and she'd get a mixed look on her face. Part regret, part anticipation. I still believe it was the best Christmas present she ever gave me. I love Christmas. I love seeing Christmas decorations. I love snow and firs and holly trees and hot cocoa on cold days and Christmas music and Christmas movies with cheesy cliché conclusions. During the holiday season, middle of the year, doesn't matter to me, every day is Christmas because Christmas is in me every day. It's a perpetual feeling, and I'm grateful that people leave their decorations up because these complete strangers are sharing their joy, their love of Christmas, with me. Just like my mother did. There's always bad shit going on in the world. Wars, hate, starvation, abuse. The Christmas spirit is the polar opposite of all of it, and to the people who leave their decorations up past some stranger's arbitrarily determined date of expiration, I say thank you. There's never a time when we don't need some of that spirit, and for every person who rolls his/her eyes and scoffs at the doofuses who haven't taken down their decorations, there's also a person who looks at those decorations and feels a spark of warmth.

Seems down to earth. Nothing ground-breaking, but solid nonetheless.