GM Crumpet

First time I used the full combo after level 50 and lots of purple slotting I was shocked at the "insta-poof" myself. Teleported in, used shadow slip to collect the enemies, eclipse, mire, dwarf, mire, human, quasar.... "Where did everyone go??".

The server gods decided I was mistaken and the generic failed. I've cancelled the generic 🙂

It was me. Apologies, I've been suitably chastised and am happy for you to rename it back 🙂

I hate speed boost with a passion and would happily kick kins from my team if they spam it. Big wide open maps? Go ahead, fill your boots. Small twisty caves/ council maps? For the love of dog stop!! 😛 I know I can turn it off at null but I always forget until I'm disentangling my corpse from scenery or shooting past the mob I'm aiming for into the one behind them....

I was shocked at how good Mire is on a Warshade. You get two and with a lot of enemies round you they boost the WS to damage cap and you just obliterate everything. Use it with Eclipse and your WS is seriously OP. It's like Fulcrum Shift though as the more enemies in range the better it is, but it's not team wide. Soloing +4/8 is actually easier than soloing +4/2 🙂

I barely notice the crash o be fair. "Oooo my damage is a bit low, oh it's OK again now" kind of thing. I run with Invulnerability

AFK masterminds generally multibox and usually with more than three accounts. They don't click doors to replenish the enemies, and generally sit there for hours and hours while their pets earn them rewards. Leagues are a delicate balance. The rewards are already reduced because only damage caused by your team count, then it's split between all teams who hit that enemy. Normally it doesn't matter. If a player is finding it hard to fight then they click doors. Everyone involved is generally doing something for the league. An AFK team not associated with the league is another drain on the league rewards. Yesterday I had half an hour to kill so went to PI and my level 36 blaster barely got 2 bubbles. My XP was in the single and double digit range. Hovering overhead was a flock of masterminds. Later I went to Kallisti Wharf and the league size was roughly the same and suddenly my XP was in the hundreds and thousands. I levelled three times in the half hour I was on. That's the problem with so many AFK Masterminds. In KW I've been in leagues where someone has tried it and we just moved round the corner leaving them to it. With PI at the motel it's not so easy. I went on at silly o'clock in the morning and there were a dozen MM's just standing there with their pets. No other players, just the AFK Masterminds. Many players are using the event as a way of fast levelling alts. Either alts they haven't played for a while or new alts they have created specifically for the event. As GM's we have a duty to all players to have things as fair as possible. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. We have policies in place such as no multiboxing when servers are busy and creating strain on other players systems. Too many people and the lag is palpable. If you've done Mapserver with 2 or more leagues in one spot you'll experience a slide show and rewards will drop to almost nothing. The solution for that is for the leagues to move away from each other. One quick incan across the map and everythings fine. With ToT it's a similar principle. So many AFK Masterminds slows everything down to the point the lag makes the game borderline unplayable. Players are in it for the badges and PaPs, but also a large percentage is in it for the increased XP rewards.

A lot of it is firewall or antivirus being overly cautious and blocking the game, hence the "no internet connection" thing. Other than that it might be port blocking from your ISP. I know Spectrum and AT&T are both suspects when it comes to this kind of thing. A good proportion of the game connection issues are ISP related. We have player in the Philippines who struggle, despite their ISP swearing it's not them. It is.

For me I found the changes in playstyle as I levelled was interesting. I now have incarnate PB and WS and while I enjoy PB, I prefer WS just because it fits my playstyle better. I must admit I don't really use the human forms much any more. I use the nuke on my PB, and light form, but outside of those I get a lot of work out of the two forms. The WS gets more of a workout with eclipse, 2 mires, a nuke and the ability to drag all the enemies into my grasp, plus a pet I can summon from their cold dead corpse. Unfortunately the way slotting works you have to specialise and things have to get ignored. For me (and other people have different opinions and play styles) I found that concentrating on the nova and dwarf, plus the powers that provide immediate advantage was the only way to make a viable character. And trust me, I'm very viable. Even if I do sometimes have to rely on my self rez as part of my attack chain 😛 TP in, go human to ecl.... crap I died... No biggie.... Where was I? Oh yes, eclipse, mire., dwarf, mire , human, nuke, dwarf, slap the enemies till they fall over, strip their life force out of their body for a rather sweet pet. Repeat as necessary 🙂

Please remember there is a hard 13 age limit to the game, so don't let the little ones play. Messing about with base building on your own account is fine, but not having their own account or playing the game itself.

moved to off topic

Locking this necro thread

Very true. Also don't underestimate the boost from other AT's when in a team. I was doing a Market Crash the other say and was absolutely owning it on my WS. So many enemies to suck dry, plus the bonuses from the other 7 players. I was tromping over the top of everything. Crimson thingy at the end was very obliging about supplying endless minions for me to feed off, though I did have to have self rez as part of the chain to get eclipse back up 😛

It sounds like you are having a double click going on. What happens if you bind it to a key? I have mine on a key and press the key, lobster. Press it again, human. Same with squid. Get too excited and hit the key twice and I swap then swap back. ZPdeqGJ - Imgur.mp4

As a player, I always found khelds really underwhelming and meh as I got overwhelmed with the vast array of options and very little knowledge of how to actually play one. Indeed, I made and deleted a WS and PB several years ago, having got to around level 20 then power levelling to 50 to see if they got better, but they didn't. Last April I made one of each during the mapserver event and once they hit level 50 I parked them up thinking I'll get round to trying them again at some point but never did. Then I met Laucianna by accident and came across her rather excellent guide, plus the fact she worked with me one to one to help me understand the mechanics, and to make a good build based on my own play style. I started with Dooms builds, then tweaked them. And you know what? They are so much fun. I'm busier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs and occasionally find I need my self rez as part of my attack chain, but playing a tri-form is just so enjoyable. They tank, just not as well as a tank, they blast, just not as well as a blaster, they buff and debuff, just not as well as a defender/controller. Yet somehow the combination is more than the sum of it's parts. I don't use the macros, I just have the forms on a key and a flick of the key and they swap between them. The TP is on one key, the form changes are on others. Move my little finger slightly and press. Instant form change. For me that's what makes khelds so versatile. WS teleports in, shadow slip, eclipse, mire, dwarf, mire, human, nuke, back to dwarf. Slap things till they stop moving. Dark extraction and move on. PB I find easier, light form, squid, shoot things, lobster as needed. Nuke on demand. I admit, I'm at the point where inf isn't a problem, so slotting the best enhancements is automatic, but even with less expensive enhancements a good knowledge of the mechanics of how to optimise your playstyle makes a confusing array of abilities much easier to get your head round. I've never had to spend as much inf as I have slotting my khelds. As with masterminds, you can tweak macros and binds to fine tune how you want to play, but at the risk of an outcry (No Crumpet you're an idiot!!) you don't really need much. When I play a mastermind I only use the default pet command buttons and don't see any need for anything more complicated. Same with khelds. Outside of some keybinds to make the most used powers easy access I don't feel like I'm at any great disadvantage not having a tray full of macros. Seeing the love given to some of the MM sets like Undead and Mercs to make them very playable I'll be interested to see what the devs have in mind with the khelds. Hopefully they will listen to and take feedback from the leaders of the kheld community like Laucianna before they make any final decisions. No point asking me, I just listen and pay attention, then implement the suggestions to make me better. I'll tell someone if there is a must have power like light form or self rez, or argue that I don't find a power effective, but for the most part I just follow the experts and look at how they do things and try to copy them.

You really don't need to run at -1 most of the time. I play a lot of solo and once I get some slots and SO's I run at +1 without much difficulty. I'll -1 if there is a really hard boss like Veles, but apart from that it's pretty much anything goes. If you seem to slicing through mobs with ease it's easy enough to go up a notch, if you struggle then down a notch. Early game especially you can do default with little difficulty

I'm torn. On the one hand I want to lock this thread as it seems to have run it's course, on the other hand it is making me cackle like a witch throwing reprobates into her oven 😛

As others have said, you are in the lap of the RNG gods. I've gone weeks with no purples then had three drop in one session. There is a table somewhere with drop rates and it's based on enemy rank and level. More enemies mean more chances on the table divided by number of players in the party.

I always forget that command 🙂

Just to add to what GM Widower has said, never download mods (or indeed anything) from anywhere other than official Homecoming sources. We have an excellent modding tool written By Michiyo and they check all the mods to make sure they are good and don't contain hidden nasties, and AbovetheChemist works hard to make sure Vidiotmaps is up to date, bug free and also free from anything that shouldn't be there. The people involved try their very best to make sure nothing slips past, and while it's a possibility it's a remote one. Unfortunately we can't vouch for third party mods and it's very much a buyer beware situation. If something goes horribly wrong we will try to help, but our abilities are limited.

That's very kind. I don't tend to reuse names too much though as all the alts I keep have a back story and I've often spent ages trying to find a power set that works with the name.

Sounds like very reasonable rules to me. As a team GMs try to stay out of league stuff, a league leader makes the rules and if people don't like it they are free to go make a league of their own.

love it. I also have Alty McAltface 🙂

I have Karen the Barbarian and Fairy Nuff. Do they count?

At some point, in the fullness of time, when the times right. And that's the definitive answer straight from the GM team. And you can quote me on that!!