Parabola

Among other balance reasons for not allowing set enhancements to be slotted in free auto powers this prevents the noob trap of slotting a stealth IO in a power that cannot be turned off. IIRC this was allowed once upon a time and it caused no end of problems on escort missions.

But can't you then just pick any low FX armour set and the science or mutation origin? Radiation in this case is backstory rather than power.

I couldn't agree more. I've always thought having reactions is a bad idea and I believe they contribute to many of the problems we see on the forums.

Not at all. As you can see it was a while ago and didn't exactly gain a lot of traction. I only brought it up because I mocked up what such a set could look like. I really think this is a gap in the IO landscape that would be worth filling.

I agree that this is a bit of a gap in the current IO line up. A while back I suggested the same thing:

I solo 99.99% of the time and a small proportion of that is spent dual boxing. If dual boxing was banned I would simply continue to solo 99.99% of the time without it. Dual boxing isn't a replacement for teaming, it's another form of soloing.

They could just instate a forum rule that says 'if you are asked to leave a thread, do so' and the outright bans follow if this is not obeyed. Going straight to the ban would indeed be too strong unless other rules had been broken.

Such as . . .? At the moment moderation seems to roughly escalate as follows: 1) Play nicely everyone, don't make me come in here. 2) Hid some posts, seriously cool it everyone. 3) Ok we're done, thread locked. I suggest an extra step between 2 and 3 where appropriate: 2.5) Ok X and Y, you were asked nicely and this isn't on. Do not post again in this thread or bans will follow. Again, I appreciate that this isn't as simple as the complete threadlock and it does require moderation being more publicly direct but it would be fairer to other posters in the thread. At the minute it can feel like everyone is punished for the actions of individual posters.

The short version is shut off xp at every level ending in a 4 or a 9 and do everything you can. There is a bit more to it if your OCD is very strong though. When I've tried this I've been aiming to get all my contacts to confidant status (full bar) but that raises an issue blueside. A lot of the old origin contacts share a pool of missions alongside those specific to them individually. So, if you tap out one origin contact before moving onto the next you can find there aren't enough missions left to get the new contact to confidant. Unfortunately, even bearing the above in mind my last attempt at this was spoiled by a contact I couldn't get a full bar on. I'd been cycling through all five origin contacts in each level range but I still ran out of missions. Other than that the main dangers are forgetting to do something (the atlas park safeguard is easy to miss) or just simply not shutting off xp soon enough. You have to be very careful of mission and story arc completion bonuses, particularly early on. Something I've been enjoying while doing this kind of challenge is to try to get field crafter more or less through drops alone. It gives some purpose to all the enemies you are wading through with xp turned off. You still don't pick up enough lv10 recipes though. It's also quite satisfying to pick up the exploration badges and history plaques as you go too. It's a different experience doing it when the mobs are still a threat.

Chapeau! I've had a few tries at this and given up every time. I'm settling for doing everything in flashback but in level order for my current run - it's going well, nearly finished 25-29. As well as missing out loads of hunts it means you get to keep levelling and can use a much more fleshed out build. Of course there are a load of missions that aren't part of a story arc or have a badge so these are out of reach doing it this way. I don't like playing on anything other than the highest settings I can manage though so it's still taking a long time...

This is a good point. I'm still smarting a bit about a suggestion thread of mine (years ago) that was locked after two posters took it upon themselves to get into a massive argument that wasn't even on topic. I get that from the moderators point of view a thread that is blowing up into arguments is a headache and locking it is a simple option but it doesn't feel very fair to those not directly involved - particularly the OP. Perhaps the moderators could look at removing problematic posters from a thread before resorting to locking it (assuming the opening poster themselves aren't the issue)?

Othering as I understand the term is the assignment of labels to people, I don't see how calling out such behaviour in the abstract can be considered the use of this? But I appreciate that all this is very much a matter of perspective which is what makes this such a tricky topic.

I've often thought the moderation here could do with being more heavy handed rather than less. Too much antagonism and 'othering' is being allowed; the derogatory labelling of groups of posters in an effort to undermine and dismiss their opinions should not be acceptable.

I've attempted different versions of completionist characters a few times. Something to decide up front is whether you are going to try to do everything at level or settle for doing everything you can as flashbacks. The former is the greater challenge and takes some organisation, the latter is frankly a lot more achievable. If you are going to try to run at level you need to turn off xp at every level that ends in a 4 or a 9, and then work through all the contacts until they are out of missions. You can also do radio missions for the various safeguards and tip missions etc. Be warned, this is a slog, particularly blueside. There are a lot of filler missions including copy/paste hunts which test the patience. Using flashback and working your way through the story arcs is a more pleasant ride. You get to keep levelling and can bring a much more fleshed out build to whatever you are running. I'm currently running a character in this way and just doing the blueside story arcs I'm vet level 4 with most incarnates unlocked while still running the 24-29 content. Either way my top tip for choosing a character is pick something you enjoy. You are going to be spending an awful lot of time watching one set of animations. I personally favour brutes as they are unmatched in the early levels but my current run is a storm sentinel. Some form of stealth can be a useful time saver but it is perfectly possible to just bull your way through a mission to the objective if you are tough enough. You are also going to have to fight everything including the more irritating enemies. Some form of boss level hold or stun is very useful against certain enemies and it's worth having a plan for heavy debuff situations. I'd also seriously consider having built in mez protection. This is all assuming you are going to turn up the difficulty as you go, at +0x1 you can face roll anything but where's the satisfaction in that? Good luck with whatever you go with!

The safest thing is to target an enemy in the middle of the back of the group. I tab target and for speed I generally target the nearest guy and position myself for the best coverage. After a while you develop a mental map of cone dimensions and get a fairly good idea of where you need to be to hit most of a group. Something I always find really useful for Seeds in particular is some form of stealth, it gives you a bit more time to line things up. Be aware that if you have Audrey and the creeper patch following you they will aggro mobs for you though. Just so it's clear all cones originate from your character and extend out to their range. They will extend to this range regardless of how close you are to the enemy you have targetted (with very long range cones like Umbral Torrent it's easy to blast right through the group you are fighting and aggro the group behind),

This just occurred to me - I wonder if it would make runners slightly less annoying if they could be flagged as 'defeated for the purposes of mission objectives' when their morale breaks. So, in a defeat all you wouldn't have to worry about tracking down every last enemy that has fled from you, and any enemy guarding a hostage wouldn't count as still holding the hostage while they take to their heels (which also strikes me as more realistic). I've no idea how the coding for fleeing works so this could well be a complete non-starter but it just dropped into my head (as I watched an enemy guarding a hostage run out of the room while the hostage continued to cower in place). Avoid effects and the like would need to be excluded of course, this would only apply to enemies fleeing due to low health.

I'm wondering if a system could be coded that would allow multiple auto-fire powers but only certain powers. Basically long duration buffs such as hasten, domination or the click mez protections could be on a list that would allow them to be set on auto-fire together. But if you set a power not on the list to auto, such as healing aura or an attack, then you are only allowed that one. That would allow the devs to fine tune the level of automation they are happy with. That being said I play using keybinds to trigger powers and it's all too easy to keep queuing powers, preventing an auto-fire power from going off. Having a power set to auto doesn't guarantee it will fire as soon as it is recharged and that would be more pronounced with multiple powers set in that way.

Dark/elec for style, shield/dark for power. I don't get on with elec armour.

Claws/nrg is indeed a great combo. Mine was one of my most accomplished characters until altitis bit again and she got parked. As a partner to shield, dark melee is a classic for a good reason. There is huge synergy between the sets. It has to be said though that this combo also works brilliantly on tanks.

I'm firmly in team taunt aura (not a real team obviously, far too antisocial for that). It has to be said though that these days the only reliably sticky things are tanks. Both scrappers and brutes have to get used to the odd enemy taking to the hills regardless of taunt auras. On the subject of power sets for my money claws is the scrapper primary. Nothing else has such a natural home for the critical strikes set. It also has fantastic single target and aoe damage, fast attacks and decently varied slotting opportunities. I'm also a big fan of shield on scrappers. It's such a shame we can't pair claws with shield...

Bio/stone is such a good combo. Once you get the aoe online in the 20's and put ff+rech in everything it's so much fun. I take everything from bio and everything but hurl boulder from stone. Proccing out DNA siphon creates a very functional extra aoe. I nearly always take focused accuracy on every melee character but it's particularly important here. Being to hit debuffed can be a death sentence with how much this combo relies on active mitigation.

I put a build together for this a while ago (never actually played it though). SS/SR with force of will and mu. If you do a forum search for 'brutinal' you should find it.

Everyone will of course have their own priorities when building characters, the beauty of this game is its flexibility in play styles. Personally I always build my characters with the levelling process and then exemping in mind. They also have to be competent at both single target (solid, end sustainable, able to solo an av attack chain), and aoe (able to clear full spawns solo in reasonable time), for as wide a spread of the game as possible. I simply would never play a character that had to wait until lv35 for aoe, or that then lost that aoe exemping down to several of the commonly run task forces. I take the epic aoe in addition to (generally one of) the available aoe in the secondary on doms. Yes, fireball for example is better dpa than whirling hands but it recharges much slower and whirling hands has both the double tap mechanic and a minor control side effect. It also allows the slotting of an extra purple set which is always a boon for dom builds.

Any plant control character not taking seeds or carrion creepers may as well play another set. Those powers are plant control. Also I've no idea where this 'don't take whirling hands' thing came from. Dom's are painful enough to level without waiting until epics for direct aoe (seeds and creepers will provide quite a bit of indirect aoe but you still want a button to push that spreads damage around). WH with it's double tap mechanic makes energy actually decent at aoe. It's almost like getting two aoes in one power, with the benefits that they share slots (very efficient) and are both pbaoes (unlike most sets that awkwardly have to juggle a cone and a pbaoes).

I really wouldn't drop siphon life. With no recharge it fires 3.5ppm procs at something like 70%, and a chain of smite, siphon, smite, midnight is reasonably easily achieved. Put two winters in it (acc/dam, acc/dam/end) and four procs and it hits like a truck. And it heals you.