GastlyGibus

Peacebringers and Warshades. No matter how hard I try or what kind of concept I go for, I can never stick with them for long. They both feel like AT's that are trying to do everything but aren't capable of doing anything as well as other AT's. I know some will disagree and say I'm wrong, but that's just my personal experience. I never know what to do with them and they always just feel so underwhelming to me.

A lot of things have changed from live, so feel free to ask questions. One thing that hasn't changed is how helpful the community here is. 😄

Like others have said, if it's blue, it's patrol EXP and gives you a boost to EXP gained until it runs out. You get like one bar of patrol EXP for every few hours you're logged out, to a maximum of ten bars (an entire level.) If it's grey (although for me it looks dark red, so I dunno what's up with that) then it's debt. Hover your mouse over the EXP bar for a few seconds, it'll tell you how much of all three EXP types you have.

Here's the ones I took. Not a comprehensive portfolio, but just the ones that caught my eye as a non-judge. And of course the vanity shot of myself 😛

I actually took some pictures myself, but they were mainly of costumes that caught my eye and not really of the event as a whole. If you'd like me to post 'em here though, I can!

The only complaint I think anybody had was the running time. Perhaps for next time you could have each judge on your panel critique costumes by themselves, and then compare/combine your scores together. Have the judges line up and players go down the line to be looked at by each judge in line, so that way it feels a little less like everybody is just standing around waiting for their turn. Other than that, it was a ton of fun, and I'm glad you guys put in the time and effort to make it possible. Definitely looking forward to any possible future contests. 😄

I have one on my TA/Archery Defender that very much fits the description you gave, at least in my opinion. I was going for a "high-tech but not sci-fi" kind of stealthy look, and this is what I came up with. Using the camo option, you could probably re-color it to match whatever environment your character would be in.

Should also probably note, doing it the old fashioned way via tips also nets you 40 merits for doing a morality mission. Not to be confused with the alignment missions. So there's that if you're looking to solo-grind some merits out of it. And honestly, I kind of like the writing for tip missions. Better than a good chunk of the standard content in my opinion.

Double posting, but I have an update. I think I finally figured out what the cause of this is. Bought an enhancement unslotter and took out the level 50 Range IO from the power. Savage Leap is now behaving normally, doing damage and rolling tohit on targets. I am now hitting things far more reliably than before. This can now be explained as a bug, where putting range enhancements into Savage Leap, as far as I can tell, causes the power to not fire off properly more than half the time. Either this should be fixed, or the power shouldn't be allowed to accept +range enhancements.

Double posting, but I had another idea too. Villains need more ways to feel like their evil-deeds are actually affecting the world. I think it'd be really cool if redside had a task-force where on completion it triggers a blueside mini-invasion event. You could also have one blueside for parity's sake, triggering an event on redside. It could be similar to the Rikti Invasion, but maybe not on a zone-wide scale. I'm thinking more contained the way certain zone events already are, like Steel Canyon fires or Skyway Troll raves. Redside could have a strike force where you stage an invasion in Paragon City, and upon completion, you could have a certain section of a blueside zone be "invaded" by Arachnos or some other evil group, complete with supervillains and others causing mayhem. Heroes get badges for stopping the invasions, and villain get badges for completing the strike force.

I will second the suggestion for a robot/elec mastermind. Or really any primary/elec MM. Corruptors do pretty solid damage on their own, so your daughter can have fun knocking enemies all over the place and you can both buff each other while your pets clean up any stragglers.

Yeah, my original suggestion wasn't meant to lock players out of the other branches. It was to say "hey, if you're a mercenary, here's a contact line that focuses on contracts and bounties." The same way Praetoria doesn't lock you out of one line if you choose the other. It simply would be a method for players to choose what kind of content they want to play.

While those are both cool cool costumes and I like them, I don't think they really fit with the concept I have for her. I guess I should clarify a little. The concept is more a full armor suit underneath her street clothes. The idea is that her armor is doing most of the damage absorption with electrical properties. So, I'm not saying they're bad designs at all, just not quite what I'm thinking of for her concept.

Seeing a lot of suggestions for villain motivations, and while generally I can see why the arcs are written the way they are, I can understand the feeling of "my villain would never do that." My suggestion to alleviate this problem would be maybe organizing contacts into "branches" the way it's handled in Praetoria. You've got the loyalists, but what kind of loyalist are you? Are you the responsible one who actually cares about the safety and security of Praetoria? Or are you just a glory-hound in it for the fame and fortune? I think this could translate well into redside. In Mercy Isle you already have something slightly similar. Do you want to start working for Arachnos with Kalinda? Or are you a mercenary who wants to help Burke? Have the villain-side contacts separated into categories based on different villainous types. The ones off the top of my head would be... Mercenary - You're in it for the money, plain and simple. You don't much care who you have to beat up or why, as long as you get paid. Power - You want power and glory. Gathering resources, minions, wealth, and other necessities to help you achieve your goals of world domination. Chaos - You don't care about power or money or fame. All you want is chaos and destruction. I think some contacts might fit well into some of those categories, but it might prove difficult, I understand, and would require writing totally new contacts from the ground up. But this way, I think people could really feel more "in-character" when playing redside, and allow them more freedom to play the kind of character they imagine in their head. What Yoru-Hime said on page one is absolutely correct. For heroes this isn't much of an issue, because heroes are reactive. They exist mainly to stop evil and protect innocents. For villains it's completely different, and I think having different branching contact paths would really go far in making redside feel more unique and player-friendly.

Gonna have to change my signature as the rate I'm making tankers. Meet Street Shock, the elec/elec Tanker. Former member of the Skulls now working as a hero with her electrical power armor.

Not in the strictest sense, but since you're getting something pretty valuable for little to no effort compared to most MMO's, I'd say it's as close to free as you can get. 😛

So I know you guys are being facetious, but honestly, 100 merits for a purple. Forget free purples once a year, you can get free purples once a day by just running a TinPex followed by a Yin TF. Bam. Free purple, and it hardly takes more than an hour. 😜

I arrive once again to ask for help, and maybe bring this thread back to its original purpose. 😉 I rolled a new Elec/Elec Tanker named Street Shock. The whole concept is that she used to be a street thug among the Skulls, but ended up finding a suit of high-tech power armor and becoming a hero. Full bio-below "Formerly a common member of the Skulls, Bridgette Thompson was in it for the glitz and glamor. Her particular group one day decided to raid an old, abandoned tech lab, hoping for something to salvage and sell. Inside they found an advanced suit of armor, but before they could celebrate their find, the Freakshow attacked, themselves looking for new tech to use. A firefight ensued, and the Skulls found themselves outmatched by the Freakshow's superior weapons. In a panic, Bridgette donned the suit of armor, which granted her control over electricity! She barely managed to beat back the Freaskhow and save her own life. Seeing the rest of her comrades dead, and herself having nearly lost her life as well, her entire mindset was changed. Seeing the potential with this new armor, and wanting to atone for her past, she adopted the name Street Shock, using her armor to protect the innocent." Basically, was a thug, had a near-death experience, decided to turn her life around, and also has super-powers now. I'm looking for costume ideas that combine the street punk theme with high-tech armor. This is the only costume I've got for her so far. I like it, but obviously I've got a plethora of costume slots to fill, and suggestions would be really helpful! Thanks in advance.

Don't know if this is a typo or not, but I'm going to report it here anyways. A good amount of random dialogue from Skulls on the streets of Kings Row looks like it belongs to the Trolls, and not the Skulls. Some choice examples I've found: "Why you heroes dress so crazy? It makes me want to drown kitten." "I think I have drinking problem." "Amazing what free sample can do for business." Again, don't know if it's intentional, but it does seem really out-of-place.

Maybe not a real "unintended" design, but something that gets overlooked a lot, and can be easily remedied that I felt like sharing. One of the common complaints with the Trick Arrow set is that it has no built-in method for igniting your Oil Slick Arrow, which means most folks pick a pairing set that has some form of energy or fire damage in it. If you pick Archery, you'll waste your highest damaging single-target attack on an oil slick! But no more. If you're Technology or Magic origin, you can use your Taser or Apprentice Charm origin power to ignite your own slicks. If you aren't either of those, than you can just go to the P2W vendor, revoke your origin attack, and take either of the aforementioned powers for oil ignition. No more wasting your precious attacks on oil slicks, when you have a cheap, quick cooldown, higher base-accuracy power to ignite it!

This sounds super fun and I'm definitely going to try to make it. Can't wait!

I went and tested it some more, this time on grey-conning enemies. Against level 1 mobs in Mercy, it hits a little more often, but it still misses maybe 1/4th of the time and does nothing. The attack isn't even firing off, because the mobs don't draw aggro to me, since I'm so high level. Normally if you miss a grey mob they'll attack, but it's not even registering as an attack. Went to Crey's Folly, still conning grey, but a little higher level now. Starts to miss a lot more noticeably now, but still hits more often than even-con enemies. I wish it worked. I really do. Aside from this one oddity with him, my Stalker is pretty fun to play. I ran a second build the other day, deciding to skip out on Savage Leap because of these issues, and I just felt like a really wimpy Stalker with no AoE.

I am running Regeneration as my secondary. My only toggles are Integration, Tough, and Hide. I have Fast Healing and Resilience as auto-powers. I don't have him kitted out with sets yet, so I've got very little global effects or procs that I could even imagine interfering and producing those results. I am not level 50 yet, so there's no Incarnate abilities active either. I'm at the point where I'm considering respeccing out of it, because it never works. But then I feel worthless on teams because my main AoE power is not there.

I'm testing this right now against even-level mobs in Grandville. Activating Savage Leap and then just running away, as all I want to do is see if the power hits or not. Every attack I'm making I'm making from the hidden status. These are my logs. Tested just now on my SM/Regen Stalker. Out of the 8 times I used Savage Leap, it only worked 2 times. The other 6 times it did nothing at all. Testing some more, this time without Hide on. I am not stealthed and opening up with Savage Leap once more. Same mobs. 8 attacks from out of hide. Only 3 actually hit. When they do hit, you see it says I have a 95% chance to hit, and it actually makes the ToHit roll. The other 5 times nothing happens. I have it slotted with level 50 standard IO's, one range, two damage, one accuracy, one endurance, one recharge. This power is completely broken.

This power in general on Stalkers just flat-out doesn't work about 50% of the time. I'm going to quote an old post I made about the Stalker Assassin's Strike bug here, because what's happening to me with Savage Leap is the same exact thing, but it happens far more frequently. More often than not the power doesn't fire off at all. It'll teleport you to the enemy, break hide, and do the animation, but the combat log shows nothing, no hit or miss, no damage, just aggro. This is really frustrating and makes Savage Melee for Stalkers nearly unplayable, since the set-defining power is completely broken. When activating Savage Leap from hide, it almost never works. When using it while unhidden, it works maybe half of the time. It is virtually unusable in its current state and this seriously needs to be looked at.