InvaderStych

The biggest problem with Hemo is that it is a stack consumer without enough return when compared to keeping the stacks. Generally speaking it is going to be better to grab Zapp/MB and use that instead of Hemo. This means the only stack consumer is RF, which is 200% worth using at 5 stacks because it is not just a damage bonus, it is a radius bonus as well. The radius increase is what really pushes RF @5 stacks over the top. IIRC, there is also a thing where DoTs that are flagged "Cancel On Miss" do not count when calculating Critical Hit damage. Memory is fuzzy on details of that though. BT's damage bonus is small. ~41.5% for Scrappers/Stalkers and ~33% for Brutes/Tanks. This means it is generally better used to recover stacks than it is as a traditional BU power at the start of a volley. Of course this gets clumsy if one is dropping Gaussian's in BT - which is why my last Savage was a Savage/Invuln so I could drop that in the toggle. Leap (from range) builds 3 Stacks and triggers ATO2. Savage is fast enough to then use, VS, MS, and trigger RF just before the ATO2's duration expires. The two intermediary ST attacks have bumped stacks to 5, drop RF at max radius with the ATO buff still active. Hit BT and immediately recover the stacks. Finally. When you're looking at Assault Hybrid. Take Radial with Savage every time. Thank me later. For more info find Bopper's "What is Double-Hit" guide and our conversation about Savage Leap should only be a page or three deep.

🙄 I'm not suggesting anything. I'm asking questions because this thread lacks anything other than anecdotal observations amongst swapped insults, wild opinions, and the occasional joke. Order of magnitude explains why this is only impacting uncommon salvage - regardless of it being a natural moment in the market or some nefarious plot by a lone actor. There's a big difference between 50k and 20mil. It just as easy/likely for semi-casual players to shrug off a 50k+ BIN price as it is for someone with a bunch of free, inf, and alts to corner a market when the unit price is that small. Maybe Rares could be pushed to 1mil this way, but far less likely. What we wouldn't see is BIN bids driving a consistent price surge of this magnitude in 7 Figure unit prices. There aren't as many players who can throw those out willy-nilly. Also, at a lower unit price, the possibility of a wider swing from norm is higher than a 7or 8 figure unit price, where there is more room to overbid the norm before it starts looking outlandish. We might see uncommon salvage go from 10k to 60k, but we're not going to see Winters go from 20Mil to 120Mil without an unnatural influence. That would take a concerted effort by someone manipulating the market as the unit price is too high for BIN bidding to move the price that far. That's the most extreme example, but I don't see it happening with the 8-10mil ATOs either.

Not what I meant in the least. This is what I meant. Writ large. 50k is pocket change. Hell, it is barely pocket change. 50k is a freaking rounding error in a lot of player budgets. That's what, a handful of bosses at 50? Not hard to imagine prices just going up from player impatience. It is just a game after all, and not everyone approaches it like it is the personal finances of their family and the house is on the line. Not hard to imagine a surge just from people unwilling to wait.

Can we see the evidence in support of this being driven by a single player rather than [A Numerically Significant/Relevant Number] of players putting in BIN bids in large quantities? <commentary removed in the interest of neutrality> 🤷‍♂️

Player protection from Taunt in PvE is rare to the extreme, if it exists at all. Standard melee armor toggles certainly don't have it. Unless there is one I'm forgetting that does, which is possible. For a very long time it simply did not exist as a thing that players in PvE had to deal with. Struggling to think of a group prior to the Black Knights using it, but there must have been a couple instances of it before that? Some group in Praetoria proper maybe? Aside from them, New Crey pack it, and it is in use in ASF - so we can expect to see it in future content, Hardmode releases, and probably NPC group revamps, etc. Well said. Aggro should be about their targeting, not their movement. Fear/Flee ideally would be divorced from that.

UnFuck Flee Code First. There are far too many folks reporting that it is not only vastly different than Live, but became much, much worse sometime between early 2020 (when I joined, and I have noticed the same change in mob behavior that others are reporting) and now. Then we can reconsider the discussion regarding scrappers.

So ... is it too late to reboot the original?

Well, if you've tried Soylent the beverage then you've pretty much tasted the sort of flavor that watching the movie would leave in your mouth. It is ... not well made. 😄 Side Note: The founder of Soylent is a bit of a garbage person: https://laist.com/news/soylent-ceo-apology I'm all for reused shipping container construction, but the guy just dropped a container on top of one of the rare open spaces around the Desert Sprawl that people can actually enjoy, left it to rot, and then called it an "experiment in sustainable living." Hah! That's giving way too much credit to Americans for keeping silent. But just for fun going to drop this here. Turns out math can reliably predict how long a conspiracy can remain a secret based on the number of people involved in pulling it off. Over 400,000 people worked on the first moon landing or missions leading to it in some capacity or another. Had it been faked we'd have known in less than 4 years. Mathematically speaking. 😄 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/math-formula-charts-the-lifespan-of-hoaxes

Yup. Quite an effective one which is boosted when Insight is up. The hold can be leveraged against the %Hold piece in Sup. Blistering Cold in another attack to reliable effect. It is a bit on the slow side, but that's easy enough to manage. Interestingly it can slot the +Absorb piece from the Winter Hold set (Entomb?), but I've not been able to bring myself to drop either of the VR %Dmg pieces on the live build. And yeah, it hits like a truck full of diesel locomotives. It also looks fantastic with the energy shield from /SD in a matched color. Saturated AAO + Concentration + Gaussian's + Insight + Critical = <insert lot of damage meme here>. Psi (Blades Only)/SD might be a little bit on the self-limiting side (because TKB is actually very good, and MS is technically better DPA than PB), but it is a dead sexy combo.

The most valuable thing that I learned from this thread is that clicking my mouse wheel while hovering over an image auto-magically opens the image in a new browser tab.

Preface: This is the most minor of details in the UI, but it is an annoyance. Chalk this one under "Yeah, it would be nice, but not really a priority unless it is outrageously easy to implement. Like flipping a switch that doesn't break anything else levels of easy." Because the powers window puts everything that isn't a primary or secondary power into one massive, lengthy, unmanageable list that must be scrolled through on the admittedly rare occasions one needs to scroll past all the temp powers to get to their actual pool powers in that window. If the power categories were spread out into the two mostly unused columns, or the order made more sense in that third column the window would be more manageable. Some powers can be deleted, iirc, but I have no idea what determines that state. It's a minor annoyance, but an annoyance all the same. 🍻

Praetorian Chaser is the Best Chaser.

Previously been mentioned in the thread, but it is possible to do this sort of thing with the bind/macro system in the game. Takes a bit of R&D unless one is already familiar, I find it to be a bit complex as I'm not a programmer, but it isn't difficult to work through and figure out either. You'd also need two power looks for each costume the character had - assuming they had more than one - to switch between. IIRC the closest to automatic it could get is a button that is pressed twice? Not entirely sure. It's basically a variation of the same sort of bind people use for fly emotes and stuff.

Personal Dream Project: Posting this against my better judgement as there's a 0% chance anyone would adapt this properly. That immersive (VR/MR/XR) media story telling has never really worked properly is the not the least of the issues with trying to adapt, but it is definitely one of the technical hurdles. Still, as much as I'd love to see it done, I cannot think of anyone who would get it right. It is possible that some .... personal nostalgia .... is attached to this, but it does remain one of my favorite series for many reasons. https://www.goodreads.com/series/53770-the-acts-of-caine The Adaptation We Need: Someone needs to take this lovely novella and bring it into 2022, but instead of infiltrating and destabilizing a totalitarian society, demonstrate how those same techniques can be used to create one by closing down a previously free society. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/335919.Wasp Honorable Mention: I'm surprised this hasn't already been started. Only read the first two books, and while I thoroughly enjoyed and definitely recommend them they are the sort of Sci-Fi clearly written with the express goal of being easily adapted to film or TV. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333324-ancillary-justice?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=LPlyqkDlvu&rank=1 Reminds me of a conversation with a friend in college many, many years ago. Hollywood keeps re-making movies that were good the first time around and ignoring those with a solid premise but terrible execution. For example, Manchurian Candidate. Zero reason to have re-made that one. Leave Historically Significant Films Alone. Struggling to recall the list we came up with. It was a long time ago, and "college" was involved which means that sobriety was not. 😄 I do remember arguing that his top choice, Soylent Green, was indeed a terrible film when examined, but too much in the Historically Significant category to be a viable remake. That and the reveal is burned into cultural memory at this point, so that renders the idea moot anyway. At least it appears that the US Industry has finally figured out (seemingly) that re-making a recently released international movie is needlessly insulting and dumb. They seem to have realized that we'll actually watch something with subtitles. Don't be fooled by the red in my neck, I read and I'm not the only one around here that does. 😄 Could you imagine if Hollywood treated Parasite the way they treated Abre Los Ojos (re-made in English less than 5 years later as Vanilla Sky) a mere 20 years ago? Had they learned this lesson sooner we would have been spared the atrocious remake of Oldboy during that era as well. 😄 Now, if we could just start making our own TV instead of copying everything you folks are doing over there across the pond maybe we'd be onto something. Fun fact: America has been copying British TV since the time of Sanford and Son. 😄 ------------------------- Ok, last of my rambling. I am a sucker for Noir, and I dearly miss the cleverness of Code Era dialog. The genre is just ripe for the picking for reboots/retreads/inversions/deconstructions, so I'm going to put this link here as folks might appreciate knowing that it is a thing: https://archive.org/details/Film_Noir

Some thoughts on armor sets not yet listed ... ... definitely got to "catch" /Rad Armor - works great with Katana (enjoyed mine thoroughly), might be interesting with BS as an alternate. Sort of a modern take on classic Kat/Dark. Pretty much good with any of the primaries you've got open. ... StJ/Dark might be interesting to lean into terrorize. That spin kick is terribly small though and only gets the fear chance at Combo3. Might make a better Tank. ... Regen .... ? Savage might be interesting if one is inclined to make a monstrosity of some sort. I have one of these, sitting close to 50 if not already there. Never fleshed out a build I was happy with though. Definitely fun, but Savage is doing the lifting there. 😄 Wanted to experiment with putting Gaussian's in the toggle (Invincibility?) so I could use Blood Thirst re-actively to recover Frenzy stacks instead of like a traditional BU - ie after attacking or mid-chain rather than as an opener for the big damage boost of BU - as it has small +dmg bit anyway. Seemed to work when I remember to do it that way; remembering to swap the order of buttons was the hardest part.

If someone has been memed upon and is thusly owned by the meme, have they become the meme's?

Socially Sanctioned Costumed Aggression with a Clearly Defined, if Intentionally Complex set of Rules? ..... Check. Para-military organization that roams the streets in an attempt to police costumed weirdos? ...... Check. Opposing, also para-military, shadowy organization attempting to keep the Antagonists organized? ..... Check. Super-Scientists? ...... Check. Cloning? ...... Check. Sidekicks and Bodyguards? ..... Check. The Cities are the closest I am going to get to living in the Venture Universe, and I sort of like to think about it that way. 😄

I can dig it. If I am honest I didn't really think about Lore when reading your builds. Don't see Carnies very often though. Which Bots? I took the Drones on a Psi/SD scrapper and they're quite nicely behaved. Spawning them behind a target keeps the Assault drone out of its LoS and Shield Drone keeps the shields up nicely. They seem to follow close due to the whole "orbiting drone" shtick. Hmm. I should probably try that with the Carnies. Little reminders, like flicking a pebble at her head from time to time. 😄

Wait. Are you actually getting that Carnie Lore pet to cast Forge and whatever her heal is called? Because mine just stands around watching TikTok on her phone and checking her nails. Joking aside, surprised to see you're using Carnies. Unless it's just for the DRM pet, because she shreds hard targets nicely. I'm completely serious about mine (the support pet) being nearly completely inactive (Kad/Rad scrapper). I've had teammates comment on her inactivity.

In fairness, I don't follow F1 as closely as I do WEC or IMSA. You guys could have told me that they had all the cars on the same engine and I would have had to look it up to know better. 😄

Staff/Regen Scrapper. Bonus points for adding more click powers via pools. All the redraw, none of the damage.

Guys. It doesn't really matter. Yes. Combat log will show them in order from right (6) to lpeft (1). But they all fire at the same time as far as the server is concerned. There are only two cases where someone can gain an advantage from this (that I have found, to date): 1. Procs in Burn. Because Burn double-dips Procs (broken power is broken) it is possible for Burn to activate a -Res piece which will then boost damage of its own damage procs. This is a side effect of Burn and no one has yet posted a power that behaves similarly. This: ... is false. This happens in Burn, and only in Burn. Every other power I have tested does not do this. Procs all fire simultaneously and do not interact with each other in this way during a single power execution. 2. Delayed Damage Powers can be boosted by their own -Res piece. I have personally tested this in Mass Levitate and Savage Leap. Here it also does not matter what slot is used. Put it in slot 1 or in slot 6 and the effect is the same. The key here is that the damage is on delay, and thus triggered in server time after procs have fired with the power's activation. This means that ML and SL (maybe other powers on delay that I have not tested) can boost damage with their own -Res procs. Every single other instance I tested and it really doesn't matter. We're seeing them in logs in that order, but for calculations they all fire at the same time. Putting -Res in front won't boost the damage procs in line after it, and putting something with a duration (SCS +50%, FF+rech, etc) as the last to fire will NOT give you back extra duration. This urban legend of firing order is partially my fault. Yes. Combat Log lists them from Right to Left, or 6 to 1. No they are not actually activating at separate times and do not influence each other within a single power activation. It's all on the tick that counts as the power's activation. Same time. Logs are just linear, that's it. I still slot duration effects to the left and damage/debuff effects to the right, because that is the correct application for OCD. 😄

Hmm. I've really only messed with /stone when it was in beta. Aside from Brimstone and Geode I didn't pay much attention to other aspects of the set when testing it out. Ran a quick and meaningless "test" against some even level Thorns to make it easier to watch power analyzer. PA does show a movement debuff when they're in the pots, but no slo-mo effect. In-game info describes it as a 61.25% (iirc) debuff and -3.50 to run speed, whatever that means. Seemed they were being slowed by about 5mph? Definitely no visual slo-mo. Reaction Time is described as 70% / -3.50, and the slo-motion effect is definitely there, but I did not run anything on the blaster to see what PA had to say about it. Don't have a brute or tank to compare against. Certainly does not seem as effective as it should be, but that's not even remotely based on anything resembling evidence.

The analogy was for the now locked thread in General, specifically. Not the two communities in general. 🍻 In order to avoid another Wall Of Text By Stych: I appreciate the idea of it being "Opt-in," but that won't stop people from using chat to harass those who are in zone but not participating. Still a hard no from me. Whenever a hard-core PvE only player comes along to complain that there are badges/temp powers gated behind PvP Zones we all kindly (some less so) remind them that PvP Zones are for PvP and entering that zone is consent to engage. PvE zones deserve the same level of respect.