Luminara

Really? I thought most of us realized that infrequent, sporadic updates with a narrowly targeted focus of destroying one highly specific approach to playing the game by making game-wide changes intended to disguise the real purpose and drag the process out over the course of years, while continually being thwarted by players making minute adjustments, would be an incredibly poor and unnecessarily complex way to accomplish such a goal, not to mention a monumental waste of what little spare time the development team has to work on the game. But okay, maybe the HC team really is that incompetent, inefficient and insidious, and we're all completely blind to it... except the farmers, who see the truth as clearly as the noses on their faces.

Sorry, he/she meant "vision impairment". Why you gotta be so PC, PF?

They're not useless, they're early selections. Powers acquired later tend to obviate early selections. But if the game permitted players to bypass everything but the strongest and/or most utilitarian powers, other problems begin to surface. How, for instance, do you make an attack chain at level 8 with Total Focus and Energy Transfer, if the game permitted one to take those powers at that level? Your global +Recharge is hilariously low, you don't have the slots to dedicate to making those two attacks great... it's a non-viable approach. While you're standing there, waiting for something to recharge, you're being beaten to a greasy smear. That's why restrictions like this were implemented in the first place, to ensure that players weren't trying to make a non-viable character. Archetypes, pool limitations, they exist to guarantee that players never make a choice so bad that a character can't be played. The game needs powers like Boxing and Kick. The game needs T1s and T2s and T3s, in pools, in sets, in *PPs. Those are the powers we use to get to the point where we can complain about how useless they are. No, they aren't great, but they're not supposed to be. Great comes later. Before we reach great, we have to settle for good enough, for things we know will be useless later. Additionally, circling back to my original post, once you do this for one pool, it has to be done for all pools, including *PPs. That opens up a nasty can of worms. Several cans, in fact. Cans we really don't want to open, such as, if we remove the prerequisites for pool and *PP powers, shouldn't we also remove the level requirements on primary/secondary powers? Or, if we're making it even easier to access the most commonly taken pool powers, what are we adding to replace the powers being skipped so players don't go ape-shit on the developers when they decide they're being "forced" to take "useless" primary/secondary powers? Or, if we can get everything we want without paying power selection "taxes", and we don't want "useless" primary/secondary/*PP powers, why can't we have six pools, or eight, or just remove the pool lockouts altogether? Lastly, Fighting isn't mandatory. There are other Defense and Resistance powers available to every archetype. Every character, every build, is a balance of compromise, a blend of choices we make. If those compromises, those choices, are removed, we end up with a bigger homogenization problem than we already have. Look at the Fitness pool, where is that now? Look at the comments made about Hasten and how it should be inherent, since "everybody takes it". How far down the road of making "good" powers inherent do we go before we stop and realize that all we're really doing is removing customization and personalization? Yet another can of worms to stare at as they wriggle around on your plate.

It takes more than oblique sexual references to get a thread locked. Believe me, I know.

Because if it's done for Tough and Weave, it has to be done for Misdirection/Tactics/Spring Attack/Invoke Panic/Enflame/Burnout/Fold Space.

Pro-tip: behaving like a lesion-covered foreskin doesn't win friends and pacify enemies. Especially after you've been caught plagiarizing other peoples' contributions. And this isn't your house. You don't give orders here. You aren't entitled to place restrictions on who can say what, where. If you can't tolerate responses to threads, don't create threads.

And more quickly than we realize, since he'll have new tires.

Hope he didn't crack. Buckle under the pressure and upthrust his middle finger. Crumble due to the strain. I tremble at the thought of the aftershock.

First article you've read since 1882, I see.

Please. These patch notes are obviously faked! Look at the shadow on "Soon", the lighting is all wrong! And if you zoom in on "Respec", you can see that there's no pixel bleed! I know 'shopped patch notes when I see them, and I'm looking at one now. What are you hiding, "@Troo"?! Why are you afraid to let the truth be known?! #FreeThePatchNotes

Kinky.

Well, PA taunts override the click aggro, and the mummy went down so fast that I was surprised. That's my last real "weak" character.

And it doesn't even have to be one of your regular characters. 5 minutes in the character creator, name SPC43893Mule, empty the salvage bin, transfer, /altinvite SPC43893Mule, dump, delete.

Sodium, Silver, Radium and Samarium. Not bad on a sandwich, but it gives me the worst heartburn.

Because we're horny. WAIT! I meant bored! Bored!

Mender Silos' notes. Simple!

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.