InvaderStych

Cool Story. It is abundantly clear you have made value judgements here about me as a player, while I fully endorse your desire to play the game your own way. Thus no need for us to discuss further. 🍻

*sigh* Even when I explicitly state that I'm not trying to step on toes, someone's foot is right there anyway getting stepped upon. 😛 Yup. Which is why I referenced the new version of Touch of Fear. The Fear and -To-Hit are single target, and an AoE damage (something PM could use more of) component was added: Now a melee targeted AoE with a 10 target cap (16 for Tankers) Now deals negative energy damage over time Fear duration reduced by roughly 50% Cast time increased from 1.17s to 1.97s Only the main target will be affected by the Fear and ToHit debuff Now accepts Melee AoE Damage sets The -rech in PBS and the rest of the attacks is already near as makes no difference to useless. Boggle's most important effect for me is the Boggled Status, not the Confuse. Stripping it of confuse and leaning into Boggled/-rech in an AoE toggle gives the remainder of the attacks a persistent debuff upon which to stack their mild debuff. It was just an alternate idea to resolve one of the other primary complaints regarding PM: the unpredictability of Insight. Theory-crafting, nothing more, nothing less. *sigh* Nothing in my post was aimed at player "competence." For my scrapper, even stacking Boggle against Blinding Powder did not achieve the desired affect you describe to my satisfaction. For every mob listed it is/was more effective and more fun for me to just put an end to them first and then move on to the rest. I genuinely gave the power a chance by building around it the first time I ventured into PM and the result was not in line with my expectations. And yes, Vanguard's Curse is -50% End. Sorcerers and Wizards (though I think only one of those gets the curse) always die first, and my toons always carry Nectanobo's (sp?) when doing Gaussian's arc. There might be a Redside arc where one faces Vanguard, that I don't recall one is certainly not indicative. Outside Gaussian's though the only place I can confidently recall that we face off against Vanguard is in the ASF Ripple and I've yet to see any use of The Curse in those encounters. Yes. This is obvious. It is also obvious that I cannot personally make a case for something I have never built. I tried this route with a Scrapper and it didn't work out for me, but I acknowledge that it might work better on a Stalker. I have repeatedly stated that any change to Boggle needs to take Stalkers into account - even giving it the ToF treatment referenced above would be problematic for the Stalker version. Yup. As in a waste of Activation Time. A waste of Endurance. As in it breaks my "Flow State." It's not about time in real life, it is about flow in the moment. I don't want to spend my time re-applying a confuse when I could just put an end to the mob and move on. Why would a Tanker on a team spend their time with a single target confuse? Or a Brute? Maybe it's because I play melee as though the only soundtrack is the Amon Amarth discography, but I just don't see the use case anywhere but for Stalkers. Having said all that, Brickernauts in ASF may be a singular use case for Confuse, as they should be vulnerable to it during their countdown, just as they are vulnerable to Psi damage. I am certain on the latter, but don't recall at the moment exactly where the former landed among the various bits of tuning given to the Golden Countdown of Death during beta. Leveraging the Hold in GPB is/was much smoother and more useful to me than attempting to leverage the Confuse. Can your stalker Confuse an AV? (genuine question) If so that might be worth doing a repeat of the set and trying PM with a Stalker. You like the Confuse. Great. I prefer targeting macros and combat teleport. Boggle could stay forever as it is and that would be fine with me. Something to skip is always useful in its own way. Like Confront. It is possible that even if the ToF re-vamp was applied to Boggle I would still end up skipping it. Cannot say without giving it a try. Heck, leave it as a ST confuse for Stalkers and buff it up while giving the remainder of melee the New Touch Of Fear-esque version of Boggle. Nah. Replacement already started a great one over in guides. Better to chime in on that one with your recommended tactics, seeing as it is a guide thread and all. But we're getting away from the point of this thread: Psi Melee is much better than its reputation and I am reasonably confident that is something upon which we both agree. 🍻 EDIT: Only going to make one attempt to fix the formatting that gets messed up in some interaction between my browser and this forum where everything entered after closing the first quote tag still ends up listed in one big long quote. I dunno why it does this, and canna be bothered to attempt more than one edit this morning. Sorry, not sorry. 😛 Changed what I think was the offending quote to code instead. Hopefully this works.

More fun to "tell" them about being insta-jibbed with GPB. 😉 ------------------------------- Made my thoughts and feelings on Psi Melee abundantly clear in many threads, and as my beloved Psi/SD scrappy approaches triple digit Vet levels none of that has changed. TLDR Version: Mob Resistance to Psi is a "Spreadsheet Argument" that doesn't impact game play remotely as much as the forums would have one believe, and when discussed the other side of the coin is never mentioned: cutting through Unstoppable, BP "Spirit Of" bosses being weak against it (among many other annoying mobs as well), and being able to swat down a Brickernaut while it is doing the Golden Countdown of Death (Psi damage is the only damage they take in this state) are all completely forgotten because "OMG! Council Robots Take Half Psi Damage!!!!" ... as if Council Bots are a threat. Do some mobs resist Psi? Yes. Does it matter? No. Boggle has the same purpose as Confront - a power to skip in favor of build flexibility. Until it is either an AoE like the new version of Touch of Fear or until it becomes an auto-hit toggle AoE that applies Boggled status and ditches the Confuse for generous amounts of -rech it will remain so. Boggle is the one cottage that really needs to be burned down and rebuilt from scratch. There *might* be a case for a Confuse on a Stalker. On every other melee class it is a waste of time. ML and GPB could stand to have their activation times shaved, and the damage scale reduction done to GPB sometime around Page 1 (or was it earlier?) should be reviewed as the reduction was quite massive and possibly overdone. The set cannot be either "All Fists" or "All Blades" because the Fists are Smashing/Psi while the Blades are Lethal/Psi, and mixing in the more common damage types helps against various mobs that resist Psi. Smashing is good on bots and Lethal is good on Zombies. Recall, also, that ML is *all* Smashing. Finally, the damage delay on ML is too damn long. I don't mind the delay as that means ML can benefit from its own -Res proc, but the delay is too long. Edit: None of that was intended to sound as argumentative or potentially antagonistic as it may have sounded. Just sort of throwing out a quick post on the thread. Apologies if tone was off-putting.

Icon o' Fathing! I, for one, welcome our new Fathing Overlords.

Heh. Was just digging through old posts for that exact thread. 👍 Specifically: @StriderIV - Not sure what sort of screen real estate you are working with, but the Field of View change mentioned in the comment above was my single biggest game changer for using CT. Much easier to see more viable CT targets/locations - I've sort of forgotten what default FoV even looks like. Most of my binds/macros are cleaner since that post, and on my /MC blaster I've replaced a couple of them with Burst of Speed instead of CT because it is twice the base range *and* accepts global +range bonuses, as opposed to CT which only accepts +range that counts as an enhancement. Clearest example of this are the +range granted after a slow snipe on a blaster or from Clarion Radial. Both of those sources will boost range on BoS, but not on CT. Pretty sure anything that works with CT should also work with Translocation, just sub in the power name. It is useful for a lot more than just *BAMF!*ing around the battlefield. Target that teammate who's stealthed their way to the boss (works with any teleport and a target macro/bind) and port to their location once in range. This is also useful if you're playing "Target Through The Tank" or other similar tactics. Target Trainers, Contacts, Vendors, etc. Is there a mob in one of those corner offices with a window or a pill box in a Council cave that you've targeted? *BAMF*! Want to get to that mezzanine quickly? Shift-LClick macro (or target cursor, now that it is a thing). This works for bouncing from stack to stack on maps that have shipping containers and the like, a great way to get around without getting noticed and without stealth. <shift>-WASD is a quick way to escape death patches, back-up quickly to optimize cones or powers like Savage Leap (which is most effective at its max range), or just alleviate boredom while waiting for that TF team to fill. There's a reason that CT is my Frank's Red Hot. 😛

Never thought I'd be offering you a build suggestion, but D-Sync Reconstructions in Geode will nudge up the numbers a bit. There's also a Heal/End D-Sync which is incorrectly labelled as "Reconstruction" in Mids and I cannot recall the name, but those can go into EE in lieu of the +5'd IOs. Of course we're talking about some seriously minor gains here so perhaps the cost of the D-Syncs isn't worth the difference. 🤷‍♂️ I wish Translocation was closer in speed to Combat Teleport, your "Triple Panic Button" builds are brilliant and as much as I'd like to try out similar I just can't get past my CT Addiction. 🙂 Thanks for sharing the work!

Just for fun.

Hmm. With /Stone being typed defense and having many places for LotGs I'd probably skip DA for a Kat/Stone. DA boosts Melee and Lethal, but no Smashing. Unless the build caps melee as well as the typed defense it provides, there would be a Smashing Hole ( ... lol ... ) when trying to use it to either fight debuffs or reach the iCap when needed. Lots of incoming attacks are Smashing+(fire, cold, nrg, etc) which is what makes S/L capped builds work so well, even when E/N defense is slightly lower. Fortunately many def debuffs are coupled with incoming lethal as in the ITF, for example, so perhaps there's a case to be made there. Of course something like the ASF is very heavy on the Smashing (and Energy and some Fire, but only some of that comes in a pure form without a Smashing component). Victory Rush might be another interesting choice for /Stone, which is fairly endurance heavy (even if Kat is somewhat easy on endo), leaving room for Soul or Mu in the build. Just have to remember to only trigger it on Bosses or above otherwise the return is fairly low. IIRC your team also gets the endo from the power if they are in range? Fully admitting I'm probably over-thinking this one, but I needed a break from the wall of work against which I've been banging my head lately. 😛

Welcome Home. Hope some of the following helps. Hmm. Context for entering a tell manually in chat is /t Charactername, You can also left-click on a name in chat to send them a tell, or right click on their toon and select message from the context menu. If you've tried these already, then I'm not sure what might be the issue. Yup. You can add/remove various tabs as well as editing the contents of a given tab. Right-click on the tab and select Edit, this will give you a list of options to add/remove. I keep tells in both my Global and Team tabs just to ensure I don't miss them. Only certain Accolades confer a game-play benefit. The 4 "Passive" Accolades are worth grabbing and fairly easy to get over the course of a toons leveling ride. The remainder provide various powers, some more useful than others. The one that provides protection against Psionic is useful/popular, for example. More info here: Badges: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Hero_Accolade_Badges Powers: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Hero_Accolade_Powers Redside has the same options with different badge requirements. For example, Task Force Commander and Invader provide the same passive boost. Hmm.. Not sure where to begin here. There is the "Find Contact" button which can be very useful. Each week there are what are called "Weekly Strike Targets" and joining a team that is doing this will net good XP and double the Reward Merit payout (for the first run of the week only). If you are exclusively or mostly exclusively soloing, then increasing the difficulty settings will increase your XP gain. Find a happy medium between rewards payout and "PITA" factor and go from there. Setting aside some of the more obvious things; you need to click the base portal and when prompted to select a destination then activate the macro for the transit base you've chosen. Also, pro tip. If you are solo you can use the LFG queue as a de facto transporter. Limited to the contacts that are viable for your alignment/level; for example at level 20 you should be able to see Synapse (assuming Hero) in the LFG queue list. Select that, select "Lock to my Group" then enter the queue. Click the Go button (or whatever it is called) when it pops up and since you are the only one on the team it will send you to that zone standing next to that contact. If you haven't already, collect all the exploration badges for a single zone and get the Fast Travel Accolade, which grants a menu which will list all zones in which you have collected at least one exploration badge, allowing you to teleport to that zone using "Long Range Transporter." Definitely check out @Shenanigunner's guides. More there than I ever knew during Retail. HC has its own wiki as well: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Main_Page Apologies if my not remembering exact names of things complicates the answer. 🙂 🍻

Now now, there is no reason to insult tools by association with such ilk. Tools are useful. That individual is sub-human trash and should be dealt with accordingly. 😉

Wow. Take a deep breath. It's just the internet. An obscure corner of it where none of this really matters because video games.

Would it help if I told you I am one of the folks running HC on a laptop not designed for gaming, and that based on the heat generated from a single instance I'd probably want to have a mineral oil quench on hand because I am pretty sure that the alloy this thing is made of doesn't qualify as a slow enough material for air tempering ..... ..... and that I felt in no way mocked or attacked by this thread? 🍻

Well, they are certainly well designed to facilitate it. But then again, are Snapchat and Instagram: Scammers gonna scam, folks who need Mules are gonna find 'em. A hammer can build or a hammer can destroy. 🤷‍♂️ @ThaOGDreamWeaver If the Star Trek NFTs get your hackles up, then allow me to incite full on rage with this "gem:" https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-nft-gripnr-blockchain-dnd-ttrpg-1848686984 Author's Note: The NFT landscape is complex, and I am certainly no fan of the direction it has taken for the most part. I follow several photographers on IG who have been able to leverage them in order to further the causes in which they believe (for these folks, mostly wilderness conversation causes, etc). It is as with any tool since we first discovered how to create fire. Just a tool, leveraged for good or leveraged for evil, it is still just a tool. 🍻

Recommendation: Blaster: Martial Combat. Anyone who's not tried this set should give it a go. Very dynamic play, excellent animations, goes with any primary. Request: Persuade me to try playing support or CC as a primarily melee (mostly scrappers and blappers) player who is largely afraid that he's too clumsy and slow to actually target teammates and apply buffs and whatnot.

I don't think Recovery Resistance and End Drain resistance are the same thing, but I could be wrong. 🤷‍♂️

It is a stellar suggestion, but I suspect a great deal of texture work.

Yeah. Glad I clicked on page 2 of the thread before responding. Read that comment about /Invuln and /Stone not having status protection and I'm like "WTF? Minerals has mag 30 protection against confused, and what about Rooted and Unyielding!" 🤣 Also, somewhere there was a comment that because /DA and /FA don't start with -KB that one cannot build effective knockback protection into the toon. False. Mag 4, which is available in a variety of single IOs is enough for 90% of situations while leveling. It is pretty easy to build to Mag 10, which is the standard amount offered by toggles. My Fire/MC blaster carries mag 10 against KB. Technically if you really want to be immune to all but the most extreme situations you want to get to 12, iirc.

Seriously. It's been at least 24 hours since the last Regen Nerf. That is far too long!

NGL, I am sort of holding out hope that Sentinels will get /Stone with Brimstone intact. Edit: Before everyone jumps on the word Sentinel ... ... it is because I have a wordplay based name and associated concept that doesn't fit with any melee primaries except one that I don't enjoy playing very much. 😄

Ah yes. I knew I was forgetting something. Stone Skin is a gem of a power; slotting both Def and Resist sets in an Auto? Don't Mind If I Do!

/Stone is very interesting, I tried multiple scrapper combos on Beta in order to test Brimstone primarily, but I've not rolled one for "real" just yet. Decent S/L/E/N defense with some DDR but not tons. No F/C defense but it does get F/C resistance. No S/L resistance in the set though, iirc. 7 toggles means that even with the +recovery from Crystal endurance is a struggle. Brimstone is a nicely balanced damage buff, with Spines really being the only set that gets short-changed. Because Impale and TS are ranged and the ranged modifier for Brimstone is so low the damage is lackluster. Brimstone also does not trigger on auras, so no bump for Quills or Mudpots in that build. Finally, it is "Cancel on Miss" which just makes its performance a little more random. The rest of the sets felt equally boosted by Brimstone, with slower sets doing more damage per tick and faster sets getting more ticks. Also, Brimstone does not function with Savage Leap because Leap is two powers and the second of the two has an activation time of 0. Geode is basically "Combat Rest" and it works great, except when it doesn't. I had moments in beta where it would last for its full duration (the bump that gives to Brimstone isn't really worth the wait, imo) and other moments where it was basically Insta-Jibbed and I was kicked out of it almost instantly. I did manage to get a Rad/Stone scrapper to be almost endurance sustainable in Beta, and that combo looked to have tons of potential. IG continues to do damage while you are in Geode because of it's extra-special nature, but I would not bank on that long term as I am reasonably confident that IG will eventually find itself on the chopping block. I do keep coming back to /Stone and trying to figure a concept to go with it simply because Minerals has mag30 protection from Confuse, which is positively huge and confuse is one of the things I find annoying to deal with in game. BS/Stone started looking pretty sweet when I was doing some beta with it.

I'd be happy if Temporal got ported to APPs so I can treat Time Lord like Frank's RedHot. 😉

NPCs, and especially Arch-Villain antagonists whom we are supposed to find despicable, are not beholden to the CoC to which Human Players are beholden. This has already been explained multiple times in this thread. Code of Conduct is for players. Full Stop. Setting aside that I completely disagree that the use of unacceptable language or the retention of unacceptable beliefs by characters who are supposed to be vile, reprehensible, villains and the primary antagonist for an entire series of connected stories is "problematic," I will completely endorse this suggestion. Tyrant's heart and mind should be full of this sort of dismissive judgemental stuff about his "worthless underlings" - which is a phrase I could picture him using as well. All for editing the text such that it is equally judgemental of all the underlings mentioned.