Doomguide2005

I believe it is around mag 20. Doubling up on Clear Mind (@lvl 50) with my Empaths protected even squishies with no Mez protection as far as I can recall. What's Clarion's initial protection value?

Yes it should, though doing so would have been outside my comfort zone at the time. I'd probably still have either another custom target bind or macro to edit on the fly for either a new previously unencountered annoyance or unique target.

This. I had a whole bunch of premade macros for targetting specific foes including Sappers, DE quartz, DE cairns, Surgeons and "custom". Custom being the one I would edit on the fly for anything unusual and mission specific. I'd just swap which ones I needed from a tray full of them to one of my main trays for the current mission.

Illusion/'anything' you get around lack of heal (or needing to use it) primarily by Perma PA ... the pets get the aggro. Stay clear of AoE's including cones with making sure to be out of the line fire for stuff aimed at pets. Defense is always useful as well for instances of ambush type adds.

Earth's Salt Crystals applies the defdebuff like most of Earth's powers. I believe this is true of several other sleeps. Purple sleep sets are very cheap for purple sets ... especially back on Live. Something vaguely amusing about sleeping a mob just prior to the team's real alpha ... and seeing a mob or two just zZzZz'ing right through the carnage for a brief second or two.

And you can of course change what it's bound to there as well. Just be cautious with your key choice. Back on Live a long, long, long time ago I was changing my r key to target nearest foe but needed to rebind my autorun. I thought selecting the "p" key would be ideal. It was well away from things on the other side of the keyboard. But a short time later facing minions of igneous I asked in team chat, "should we pull ... " and promptly zipped off in the direction of the mob with predictable results. I rebound the "p" after the team cleaned up my mess. Oops.

Can't hop in game to try it but Roll the camera out so your field of view includes foes behind you. You should be able to either retarget quickly via bind or more easily manually retarget. Are you chasing runners when this happens? Otherwise the closely packed mobs are more a party problem than your problem (or even a HC/GM game issue).

Yeah this, a level 50 endgame incarnated blaster build --> capped defenses +/- ddr, mez resistant/proof and blaster level damage particularly of the AoE variety. Of course getting there (end game incarnate build) isn't nearly as easy as it is for the brute, scrapper, stalker or tank. Especially from scratch, no farmer or other characters to help along the way.

Not sure it's what you are talking about but VileTerror's first post on page 1 quotes some Council guys talking about strawberry flavored super soldier serum.

Quicksand is typically a one slot wonder sort of power. Unless you really need the set bonuses this would be a place to grab slots if you're feeling short somewhere else in the build. While Fly/Hover can certainly work note that some of Earth's powers need you to be on or very near the ground to work. Stalagmites for example. For the vast majority of PvE content the Celerity stealth IO plus the stealth power should be quite ample to let you position for FS (not 100% certain they stack though). Especially since Stalagmites should be up for basically close to every spawn. So either you're solo and they are already mezzed or your teammates should be taking any alphas while you get your FS off. I'd also consider Stone Mastery ... Seismic Smash is a very powerful attack that can also hit the foe with a mag 4 hold and backed by a Kin's +damage is probably hideously damaging and Rock Armor is S/L defense to go with your other defenses (just like Ice Armor). Also not sure the PS +end works as you hope in Transference ... pseudopets involved and all that I believe. Unfortunately I can't actually open the build to look at it since my phone is currently all I have for internet (or post any build)

Besides it's great fun when used by multiple Earth/Storm running at low level having discovered the then relatively new Explosive Strike proc to blast Skulls and Hellions around Perez Park street sweeping for levels.

And a big PS. That 1000 characters is, afaik, per server. And you get several free transfers a week to move characters between servers.

That might be interesting if it worked like DP ammo choice (Swap Ammo) 3 choices: No knock at all (maybe a slight damage buff), Knock Up or Knockback as is which could be changed by the KB to KD IO. Then the question would be what gets replaced. Speaking strictly about Gale vs KB stuff in general.

Reminiscing, Remember my then level 43 Claws/SR (issue 3) being invited to join my friends on a lvl 50 mission involving Malta. An auto turret got dropped in the hallway outside a lab room. I started to work on it .... battle raged around me then moved into the room beyond. Tic, scratch, ding, I chipped away at this obnoxious Malta pet. The battle beyond completed my friends exitted. My private war vs this +8 pet continued (bang, ding, pang). By me they all rushed their tank Irish Fury coming out last. As he rushed by, he briefly stopped. Footstomp! Bits of turret flying everywhere the last ... half ... of its health obliterated. I stared at the ruins simultaneously impressed he'd destroyed it with a single attack and wanting to cry like a child whose favorite toy had just been crushed by the family car. The life of a sidekick in I3. 🤪

Yes, a GM build is looking primarily for recharge (something end game IO builds are extremely good at doing) and does so by ensuring AB with its +recharge is up often enough to keep perma on your buff partner (and coincidentally keeping Hasten perma as well). One thing IO builds are good at that a GM build doesn't need (directly anyway) is defense. That is/was supplied by Fortitude and hence the minimum enhancement requirements there.

The original concept for the endmod in AB was to push the endurance recovery over 1000% enough to counter the end crash of the nuke (and resulting toggle drops etc). Obviously with the crash removed so has the reason for retaining that element in the build. Probably these days GM builds should be looking to meet the design goals the original requirements were set to meet rather than the specific enhancements/slotting used to meet them.

Good to know.

Mind you this is pulling from old Live build info: Basically frakenslotted (which should translate forward just fine) with 4 dam/rech IO's and 2 Lysosome HO's. No idea how available the HO's are on HC. But they provide Accuracy plus debuff Defense and To Hit. Edit: If no HO's then I'd probably continue the frankenslotting with an Acc/Defdebuff and an Acc/To Hit debuff or save the slots with any accuracy coming from global bonuses.

And Plain Guy hasn't even touched on the subject of defense debuffs and cascade failure...which if he ran into mobs with -defense is almost guaranteed to happen and could easily result in very sudden death. Though that wouldn't explain the value differences unless you were under debuffs at the time and didn't notice.

Recall Friend can be highly useful for positioning the corpse so if they inconveniently die in the wrong place, unlike your blaster 'volunteer', you can relocate them. Or use them, ahem, repeatedly if they go afk waiting for the fight to end (or just like getting used as a nuke). The Faithful Fans of Fallout approve of this message.

Yeah that's report worthy and let them explain how they might possibly do that accidentally to the appropriate folks. It's also one of two reasons I don't use the prompt option. I'll know right then if they're going to try shenanigans. The second being some of the teams I played on Live it was required for things such as positioning for using Fallout.

FOUR!

Fair enough. Players of all sorts can and do play with energy blast/knockback heavy sets. They probably don't do it generally from a min/max point of view but there's definitely something cathartic after a rough day of simply blowing stuff all over the place, 'painting the instanced map wall' with embedded bodies or knocking level 8 skulls all over Perez Park with your level 50 Nrg, Stormie or even with my "maxed" Claws' Shockwave.

Pretty much what I was thinking as in sounds like you need to spend time pounding him with Psi-based damage. If the epic or lore pets don't sound like something you want in general there's always those 2nd/alt builds "just for you my bro Marauder"

Ooof. Good players are good players. Being a good player is a separate thing from being a role player or power gamer or min/maxer. If I go from my highly IO'd maxed Claws/SR with 1000's of hours game time to my Storm troller or Energy blaster I'm still me. I do get that I might not be as capable of playing a particular set(s) well but I don't think that suddenly makes me a bad player merely one whose goal with the set(s) is different or is simply still learning how to play the set(s). Putting anyone in an across the board category of Good, Bad, (or Ugly) Player based on a single factor such as how they handle knockback is probably a mistake.