InvaderStych

Well, @StriderIV called me out on it, but /Shield elevates Psi/ in so many ways, including style factor/rule of cool. Let's look at some of your original parameters: Can do. Easy to over-cap defenses, lots of ddr, 2100ish HP possible with accolades, solid resists. The 1-2 KU/KD combo of ML and SC keeps the chaff busy with being juggled. GPB's excellent hold is worth leveraging (more on that below), and it is a literal eraser ... just big, big damage. IT is true - spamming mass lev can get a little tedious; I hear tell of people running Psi/Sd/Mu to make up for the AoE and mix the snipe into the attack chain, but I've not tried it. This may or may not take some form of endo management via iPowers. Yeah, I get you. I don't like the fire/ice blades either. I laugh a little with the Psi fists, but my "Rule of Cool" build doesn't use them. Still, they are hilarious in a good way. The thing is that color matching the Elemental:Energy shield to the PM attacks is visual excellence. Bonus points for doing Hover/EvM build. Extra bonus points for Combat Teleport. It just looks cool flying around with an energy shield. Ground Pounders get double bonus points for Mighty Judgement with the fat Knock-Up. (radial?) If I understand it correctly - technically one is better off with the fists - MS outdoes PB unless DoT from Insight is involved. TKB has the highest chance of triggering "Boggled" which grants Insight on the next hit (assuming no lockout). TKB is also a good place for a Force Feedback, unless something better needs to go there. Yup. I didn't have the patience to do them at +4, but I didn't see problems with the one or two I tried at that relative level. Well, except Siege and Nightstar because of their pesky 70% resistance to Psi. Decidedly, comparatively middle of the road on its own. AAO elevates the big damage from ML and GPB quite nicely. Probably does the same for TKB, which hits pretty hard. This is a "Rule of Cool" combo more than anything else. Pure performance would go NRG/SD, or max durability would be something like Dark/ or Rad/ with the targeted heal involved. Psi/SD is about style over meta, and yet it is still much better than "Good Enough." 😛 GPB has a big hold that gets bigger when Insight is up. Drop an SBC: %Hold into another attack and the %Hold from ranged in an option app/ppp attack (proc bomb'd LBE is good for this, but fast snipes are better) and you've got a reliable st hold that works on AVs without Triangles. GPB can also take the Entomb:+Absorb piece, but I've only tried it briefly; interesting but not convinced the loss of the second purple dmg proc is worth it. ---------------------------- That's sort of the "short" version. I've prattled on a bunch about how much fun the combo is; if you and I use 'sleeper' in the same way (the way it is used in reference to cars), then yes, it is better than its rep. If you decide to go off menu and make one, I'll make that my vote.

Before I go wandering off onto a wild tangent, what secondaries have you already paired with PM?

I'm still fine tuning a potential build for my flying/ranged beam/dev blaster. 'Nade and 'Trops have decent utility for solo leveling. Taser is still as you say, but not relevant for what I've got in mind which is something like hard target ranged support fire on teams - which doesn't leave much room for the bombs either. Multiple builds are probably going to be in order if I can come up with something that works like it does in my head. If I was running more of a blapper style with pbAoEs and such I'd probably give the bombs a go. Of course I have a beloved blapper, and wanted something different. /Dev is fairly flexible like that; lots of space for going different routes. Persistent +dmg from Drone is decent, and Field Op is excellent; definitely give /Dev until at least 20 if you give it another go for these two powers. Starts to come together on after that point.

It would be nice if this sort of information was not buried in the pages of a closed thread, but I'd still rather have developers developing than acting as PR/Community Rep types. It would be even better if there were someone acting in that role on a more regular basis, but that's a question of resources, etc, etc. But here it is anyway: From here:

Not to be forgotten: 100% chance for KD in Storm Kick, iirc around 70% chance for KD in Dragon's Tail. Of course dropping a %Knockdown proc into Burst of Speed is also a thing that can be done. The T1 powers from /NRG and /Sonic on Blasters are both similar to Ki Push, but because they have less Repel and also lack the 2sec mag4 hold that Ki Push contains they are less fun. 😉

The Devil Makes Three - Black Irish

Why am I now picturing Jim Jefferies as the retired Herakles living in a trailer park on the outskirts of Los Angeles?

Not just hobby stores. Some places had dedicated game stores which ended up with very large tabletop RPG sections as the breadth of games grew larger in the 80s. But yes, we never forget our first: A friend and I were introduced to the game by his mother who was the DM for the first couple campaigns. Then he took over when we found a couple other kids to join. This was probably around 1982, 83 at the latest.

Obviously the pilots have had the Mini costume reward from the very beginning. Maybe Benovo's exclusive contract with Vanguard expired and they can share it with the masses now.

Nope. Just trying to make a call for peace. Declaring that an anonymous group thinks negatively about an individual is a classic bullying tactic though, thank you for showing your true colors.

Incorrect. If I didn't care, then why did I go out of my way to demonstrate that Attack Typing Changes were completely irrelevant to a "Level 30 Blaster running SOs" after your repeated insistence that the changes were a death knell under those circumstances? Caring about something does not mean one has to bring needless, counter-productive, emotional baggage to the discussion and use that as a launching point to senselessly attack anyone with whom one disagrees. It is possible to talk about video games without that level of baggage. Or it should be, but apparently it is not. Zero relationship between my point and that question. Zero stakes does not mean "huge waste of time." It means Zero Stakes. If you do not understand why it matters how people engage in debate or discourse with each other, and why doing so in a civil and objective manner is important then nothing I say will sway you otherwise. Perhaps we should. If more people understood their own insignificance we would be much better off as a species. Ad hominem tactics only serve to demonstrate my point. Why do you assume that my post is a complaint? It was intended as a call for more civil and productive discussion from, well, everyone. That you contextualize it in this manner also demonstrates my point. Too many here have lost their objectivity and are only interested in engaging in troll-level arguing. I suspected that my attempt at a call for "peace" as it were would be met with such attacks, but against my better judgement I made the attempt anyway. Enjoy your senseless fighting on the internet. I have (edit: almost) said what I needed to say on the topic. 🍻 Second Edit to reply to this: My friend, you are describing me to a T. I did not know about HC until right about the time of the original lockdown in 03/2020. At the beginning of 2019 I had a month of work pulled out from under me by people who had previously told me how much they loved both my work and working with me. Simultaneously I was going through the most painful relationship break-up I have ever experienced. By May of that year I had cut myself off from my previous career path and effectively my entire friend group, even the oldest friends scattered around the nation. I wallowed listlessly for most of 2019, and right when I was ready to step into the world again in 2020, it shut down. HC, possibly literally, saved my sanity for those first 4-8 months of lockdown and was my only source of social contact. So trust me, I do understand this perspective. But the level of animosity shown during Page 4 shown by some of us for each other and the Dev/GM team is completely out of bounds, entirely counter-productive, and arguably unhealthy for everyone involved. Third Edit: There is nothing wrong with feeling upset, getting bent out of shape, or experiencing anger. I should have been more specific. Trust me on this one; among my friends I am known as the "Mayor Of Angrytown" with good reason. But feeling angry and expressing anger are two different things. The former is natural, justifiable, defensible; it is the latter that is cause for the most concern.

No. It isn't. There are absolutely, positively zero stakes in any discussion that happens on a gaming forum, and yet people treat the slightest change to their favorite thing as though it is the literal end of the world. Hurling insults, abusive language, circular arguments, troll posts meant only to perpetuate in-fighting are simply unnecessary. Not just because they are counter-productive, but because there is nothing here so important that it is worth investing such emotional energy into it. Doing so clouds objectivity, muddles discussion, sows discontent, and accomplishes absolutely nothing resembling progress or community. I make no claims of innocence on this point, but I do try to be "Just The Facts, Ma'am" as much as I am able when discussing the game in feedback pages in open beta. The absolute worst thing that can happen here is that one variation of a defunct game disappears leaving others in their wake. That's it. Something that I didn't have for a decade would be gone once again. So what? Nothing being discussed here rises to a level of import that remotely warrants the way Page 4 has been discussed. While it is a symptom of a larger societal problem centered around the complete loss of our ability to engage in civil discourse upon topics about which we disagree, there is no reason to drag that problem here. If a video game invokes anger and rage, then a break is in order. It is as simple as that.

So much this. Thread title should have been Sins of The Players are visited upon the Players. When people are using words like "ignorant," "stupid," "liar," and worse in their posts is it any wonder the threads turn into a shit-show and Mods come in to remove toxic posts? The way we talk to each other matters.

"What is your PIN number?" "What is your Personal Identification Number number?" Lots of these. 😄

Necro'd, Emphasized, and Seconded. Never did understand the rationale behind de-syncing the ranges on T3 AoEs from their T1/2 blasts.

It's an interesting idea. Straight division by number of targets might be a pretty far bridge though - base dmg +/- a function of the number of targets is probably more reasonable in mechanical terms. Otherwise big damage nukes with a divisor of 1 would become hard target erasers as dividing them by their target count to result in something that looks like current damage levels per target would net some fairly large totals. At the extreme end just multiply the current damage by the current max targets to estimate the result. Divide that by two if the metric is "Current damage at the midpoint of target count, more damage below that, less damage above that" and it is still some big numbers against a single target. I dig it, conceptually, though and would definitely be into experimenting with the idea should it be feasible enough to warrant testing.

I mean, GM applications are usually open, lol. I do appreciate that "Arcanum" does seem to be using Animus Arcana (Gate, Dispel) powers though. 😄

Usually in threads such as these I have a rule against repeating myself when it comes artists. Making an exception here for three reasons: 1. These two young virtuosos just recorded their first studio album, and this is their first song on which they sing. 2. The song is based on a true story (relayed in the Tiny Desk video). 3. It's a brilliant song. DOMi & JD Beck ... ... U Don't Have To Rob Me ... NPR Tiny Desk: Aug 10, 2022 (NOT TiGHT, SMiLE, U DON'T HAVE TO ROB ME, WHATUP)

Applied? Not nearly as many as I would have liked. Attempted/Attempting to apply? Hmm. I suppose as these things should be considered a "practice" rather than a goal I should probably cut myself some slack here. Dozens, so many excellent references, quotes, philosophies ... This should be a good thread indeed, thanks for starting it. I too could use the reminders right now. 🫂 They come from the strangest places sometimes. One would not think of Sterling Archer as font of human wisdom, and yet much like Homer Simpson he drops the occasional gem of a truth-bomb: Oh man do I ever clog my brain sometimes constantly. Conflict rehearsal, self-rejection, decision paralysis; a former lady-friend called it my "What-If Monster." These thoughts were a constant hindrance during my freelance career and remain so in my current work search. "What if they offer me this job, but then the one I really want that I applied to last week wants me to interview?" and other such pointless, hypothetical maybe-what-if bullshit. 😄

Costume Contest in Atlas Park, iirc. Took that screen grab a while ago, lol. GM's toons have publicly available info just like the rest of us, apparently. 🤣 I still think they need more Shinobi.

Clearly marquee comic characters are GMs.

Correct for HM ITF and ASF. Sister Valeria (and her unlockable/repeatable counterpart) doesn't have ⭐settings, it is just a post-50/Incarnate arc like the arcs in DA. I assume that's what the other player was complaining about with the description of "new content general missions." 🍻

It was a thing, quite briefly, in beta. It was rolled back promptly. There was talk of a +2 minimum, but I don't think that became a thing. Definitely no longer +4 though, as running +3 for even level groups with iShifts in play works just fine as of this morning.

Hmm. How about this: We put the +Recovery, and maybe some End/Rec resistance here instead: This is fair. It performs ok as a utility piece, but a buff as above might not go amiss. Then we take this excellent idea: And stick it on Brute's Fury instead. Also with corresponding +Res. Feels thematic for it to be difficult to slow down the Brute once they're rolling - hence the minor (stackable) debuff resistance. This also gives them a bit of a unique bump without making it easier for them to hit dmg res caps, etc. Or just swap the names around if that makes more sense. 🤷‍♂️

In conjunction with: NOTE: The comment about typing changes being one sided (NPCs only) is out of date, but you'd have to dig through the really long thread to discover that. NPC changes came first, and in a later pre-release patch the change was ported to player attacks.