Zhym

I could use some advice slotting Dragon's Tail on my DP/MC blaster. This is a toon I leveled the slow way, alternating red and blue (through alignment missions!) to do nearly all the story arcs on the way up. Dragon's Tail was really useful early on as a melee control attack until I could get survivability through defense and resistance set bonuses. So I six-slotted it and plugged in a full Force Feedback set to maximize its use for keeping mobs away. Now he's a fully T4'd incarnate, and knocking his enemies back isn't quite as important (or, in teams, appreciated). So I'm wondering if I should swap it out for something else—and if so, for what? These seem to be the most obvious options: Set name With 2 slotted With 3 slotted With 4 slotted With 5 slotted With 6 slotted Force Feedback 7.5% Movement Speed 3% Pos/Neg Res 5% Mez Res 10% Regeneration 2.5% Damage 3.125% AoE Def 1.5625% Fire/Cold Def Sudden Acceleration 7.5% Movement Speed 2.25% Endurance 2.5% Damage 2.25% Health 7.5% Recharge Time Obliteration 2.25% Smash/Lethal Res 3.75% Mez Res 3% Damage 9% Accuracy 5% Recharge Time 3.75% Melee Def 1.875% Smash/Lethal Def Armageddon 4% Recovery 6% Fire/Cold Res 10% Mez Res 15% Accuracy 10% Recharge Time 6% Toxic/Psi Res 10% Mez Res Superior Avalanche 15% Slow Res 6% Fire/Cold Res 10% Mez Res 4% Recovery 5% Melee Def 2.5% Smash/Lethal Def 5% Fire/Cold Def 2.5% AoE Def Overwhelming Force 12% Regeneration 3% Damage 1.5% Health 2.5% Pos/Neg Def 1.25% Ranged Def Mag 4 Knockback Protection I figure I'll keep FF +Recharge in one of the slots, which leaves me five slots for something else. Are any of these big improvements over FF? I'm not sure I'd want to lose the damage boost by taking Armageddon or Superior Avalanche—or is that not really a big deal? Overwhelming Force seems like a good option—damage and regen are a bit better than with FF, plus a bit of an HP boost, and a little more ranged defense wouldn't be bad. But would Obliteration be better, since accuracy and recharge time are probably more important than regeneration and a bit more ranged defense? This toon isn't quite capped on ranged defense (40.2% with stealth toggled off); melee is 19.26%. Damage bonus is currently 22.5% and accuracy is 1.52x. Endurance isn't an issue (thanks, Reaction Time!). (Sorry for not posting a MIDS build, but MIDS and I don't get along.) Any thoughts would be welcome. Thanks!

I'm wondering if I'm confused about how procs work, at least in the Reaction Time power (this is on my DP/MC blaster). When I slot either Numina +Regen/+Recovery or Regenerative Tissue +Recovery +Regen in it, I don't see their effect in the Combat Attributes window (except, oddly enough, just after adding the enhancement to the power). Is it taking effect but not showing up, or is there something about how Reaction Time works that isn't firing off the proc? ETA: The effect seems to show up if I attack something, so now I'm really confused about what triggers it. Thanks!

I believe the event message is something like, “Unusual Clockwork activity in King’s Row.”

I used it. Somehow still managed not to find all the Injured Rogue PPD the first two times through.

I just got this badge on the third try with the help of this guide. Here are a couple more thoughts on getting this: The inured Rogue PPD seem to spawn randomly throughout the two floors. At least, they weren't in the same positions each time I ran this. There are probably several locations where they might be. The first time through, I found 5 Injured Rogue PPD on the first level after Mr. X and 6 on the second level (the timer ran out before I could find the 12th). The second time, I only found 3 on the first level before logging out to reset the mission. On the third run, I found 5 on the first level and 7 on the second level. BTW, it's sort of annoying that this is on the 4th mission of a run, given the likelihood of needing to run it multiple times. Fortunately, the first three missions in Roy Cooling's arc are quick and easily stealthable, so it doesn't take too long to get to the fourth mission.

The "standard" reward for a GM seems to be 6 merits. I may be misremembering, but that seems to be the reward for Lusca, Eochai, Jack in Irons, Jurassik, Babbage, Kraken, Caleb, Ghost of Scrapyard, the Goliath War Walker in Boomtown, etc. Most of those either appear occasionally and unpredictably or require some effort to spawn and/or kill. It's weird that Adamastor is both the easiest GM to spawn and gives the highest reward by quite a bit. I'm not one to argue for nerfs, but there's a pretty good case to be made that Adamastor should give fewer merit rewards than any other GM.

I really like this idea. It could turn the Seed into a Hami warm-up. The only tricky part is that the Hive typically starts filling up well before a Hami raid, so if you zone out of the Hive to do the Seed you might not be able to get back in. The simple solution is probably just to up the rewards. Adamastor gives 10 reward merits and 5 incarnate threads and gets summoned pretty much every hour to be burned down quickly. (Imagine what it must be like to be Adamastor—there you are, hanging out wherever it is you hang out when you're a giant monster, but every hour or so a bunch of people pull you out of whatever you were doing just to beat you up. Must get old.) So "it's over too quickly" isn't the problem. And First Ward being kind of out of the way can't be the problem either, since Adamastor isn't exactly easy to get to either now that the only way to Echo:DA is through Ouroboros. So I think it's just that the Seed of Hamidon is slightly more complex and longer to do than GMs that give better rewards. It's a little too involved and has too low of a reward to attract people looking for some quick merits, but it's not hard enough for people who want a challenge. I probably wouldn't go up to Adamastor-level rewards (those are too high for the effort involved, IMO), but bumping it to 8 merits might draw a little more interest.

Oh, and about the RV heavies: you have to control the heavy for at least a little while to get credit. Using the heavy to take a pillbox should be enough to do it. So I’ve been working on this gradually by occasionally grabbing a heavy, taking one pillbox, then zoning out and doing other stuff. I should end up having controlled 50 heavies and taken 50 more pillboxes around the same time. But it’ll take a while, since I’m just trying to fit working on this badge in among other things, not grinding it.

Scirocco's second arc is really the way to go here. There are a couple of missions in Arachnos bases that should spawn a few Mu Guardians each at +0/x8, but it's the last mission that makes this arc worth it—it's practically a Mu farm. There are groups of Mu all over the map, plus a group at each of the ritual sites, and stopping each ritual draws three ambushes, which usually have more Mu. I killed 30 or so Mu Guardians running this arc at +0/x8, with 22 coming on the last mission. ETA: Scirocco's third arc is even better, since the whole storyline is about a bunch of Mu "traitors." The first two missions are Carnies and Circle, but then it's Mu, Mu, Mu all the time. I stopped counting at 44 Mu Guardians in this arc (because at that point I had the badge) before even getting to the last mission (again, at +0/x8). The last mission is also full of Mu. So running Scirocco's second and third arcs at x8 should be enough to get the badge—or close enough that running Cole's Personal Story once or twice will get you the rest of the way there.

I don't know if you've done these yet, but all of these are easy to solo with a 50. IIRC, all the zone event enemies scale, so they aren't too easy. But they're quite soloable. For the Brickstown prison break events, just go to the main entrance of the Zig. If the event is going on, there should be some police fighting escaped prisoners right at the door. Fight all the bad guys until there are no more bad guys to fight. Easy peasy. :) I had basically written off the PvP badges until I saw someone putting together an AV badge team on LFG. I got the 13 RV AV badges and two of the pillbox badges (up to Somewhere in Time) in that one run. But RV groups are rare on Excelsior, and getting pillbox/heavy badges would be a sloggy grind solo. And the AVs? Fuggedaboutit.

Since this thread is still one of the top hits for "Jailed," here's what I've found after trying a few variations of the sapper method of AFK farming this badge. The Crimson Hunt L50 red-side flashback mission opens with a base full of Malta. Running it at -1/x4 ensured that most groups had a sapper. My fully IO'd DP/MC blaster had too many defenses to get mezzed often enough against three sappers (which was the most I was able to get the attention of at a time), but resting was a good way to take a fast trip to the hospital. Switching to an unslotted build with /selectbuild 2 worked great for getting held more often. But my (suddenly squishy again) blaster couldn't handle the damage from two sappers over time. So I ended up just standing around with one sapper. I was held for roughly 35 seconds each minute. At that rate, the Jailed badge should take about 20 hours or so. Not the most efficient, but it was the best I was able to manage on an unslotted build. A couple of other things about switching to an unslotted build: The new build fights at your current level but has level 1 powers. That means no rest and no incarnate powers. I've actually considered making a second build slotted up with as many heal and regen powers as the AT will take just for AFK damage farming. That's probably not worth the time for Jailed, which even at my low efficiency can be obtained in a couple of nights, but I might do it when it's time to try for Immortal. Switching builds resets the timers on all your powers, including travel powers like the Oro Portal and the Long-Range Teleporter. So I wouldn't recommend it for semi-AFK mez farming, when you might want to jump out and join a TF or something. Switching back to your main build is going to leave you taking the slow way around for a while.

FWIW, I just verified that no key is necessary to break into the police station and bust down the doors (and get time credit for breaking out the villain!). The police station only has 6 doors, so it's not that efficient for farming on its own. But if you're running all the mayhem and safeguard missions for badges anyway, busting down the jail doors in each mission will get you Doorbuster too.

FYI, the doors in mayhem and safeguard missions are in the police station. I think you’d need to do the “break out” or “prevent the jailbreak” missions (or at least get the key) to get into the police station.

Echoing this (pun not intended—if you've done the mission, you'll get it—but I'll own it). I ran this at -1x8 and had way more Shivans than I needed for the badge. It's an escort mission, too, so you'll need to clear the map and x8 might even have more Shivans than necessary. It's a little less annoying than The Pilgrim's arc since you can run it at level 19, while The Pilgrim's Ouroboros arc forces you down to 15. On the other hand, The Pilgrim's arc can be farmed for both Contaminated and Shivans, but my toon was a bit squishy to handle -1x8 on the mission with the Shivans.

That’s part of why I also think that red side is a better lead-in to the Dark Astoria arcs. Heroes don’t have any reason to know who the heck this Scirocco guy is or why he’s such a mope. A red sider who did Darrin Wade’s arcs would also have met (and defeated) Kadabra Kill and Sigil—which the Dark Astoria text will acknowledge. Praetor Duncan is less obnoxious to villains than she is to heroes, as a nice bonus, and Max’s optional missions only make sense if you’re a bad guy. You can even choose a payoff to the whole thing that’s more villainous than just saving the world (which is a heroic thing to do, but red siders get a villain-y reason to do it). With the extra dialogue options you get if you’ve done First Ward (as a hero or villain), the best way to run Dark Astoria is with a villain who did the Praetorian content and Scirocco (or Ghost Widow). I also like Black Scorpion’s reaction to your inevitable (and unavoidable) betrayal: he basically complains about it once then moves on. Despite saying he won’t forget what you did, he barely mentions it after that. It’s kind of a shame that his arcs aren’t as good a setup for the endgame as Scirocco’s, because I like how Black Scorpion essentially acknowledges that you (as character and player) had no real choice.

I'm learning that, yes. :) I was going to use this toon to play through all the Praetorian arcs and switch alignments several times, but now I think I really need a stalker so I can stealth past some of the large maps full of ghouls. The AR/Inv Sentinel also compares unfavorably to my DP/MC Blaster, who I've been having a...well, a blast playing. I keep trying to kick mobs away and it keeps not working because I'm not playing that character. So this is what I get for putting a theme build in Praetoria.

As someone who ran every red side arc not long ago, then went through with a toon who did most of the hero and villain missions by switching alignments a lot (that got narratively weird), I'll offer a different take: while there are some problematic red side story arcs, most of them tend more toward cartoon villainy. Some of the most fun arcs in the game are in the Rogue Isles—the problem is that most of those arcs are in the mid to high levels. The low-level missions don't do a good job of showcasing how fun being a bad guy can (eventually) be. The truly dark red side arcs are rare, IMO. "Johnny's Main Squeeze" (from Jezebel Jones (35-40, St. Martial)) is the worst, IMO. It's not dark so much as creepy: you're supposed to kidnap a woman who Johnny "Any Resemblance to Frank Sinatra is Purely Coincidental" Sonata has decided is going to be his woman—whether she wants to be or not. Yeah, I'll pass on the "accessory to sexual assault" story arc, thanks. Lt. Harris (5-7, Mercy Island) suffers from the same problem. The other arc that made me feel like I needed a shower was Westin Phipps (Grandville, 40-44)—destroying books? Really? I may be a villain, but I'm not a cretin! And that may not even be the worst thing about Phipps. But it's a well-written arc, IMO, and one that rewards reading the clues. But there are so many fun red side arcs. Some of my favorites include: Radio (Port Oakes, 10-14) and Television (Grandville, 40-45) Brother Hammond (Cap au Diable, 15-24). He's a Luddite—so you will never be able to call him. Because he's a Luddite! I love little details like that. Willy Wheeler (Cap au Diable, 15-19). Poor Willy. He wants to be a player, but he's so not. Dean MacArthur (20-29) and Leonard (20-29). This is where you can really start feeling like you're coming into your own as a villain. Plus, it's got a classic cartoon storyline and one of the tougher missions in the game, depending on your AT. Darrin Wade (Sharkhead Isle, 20-30). Yeah, it's pretty lame that of all the villains the live devs chose to kill off Statesman, it was this mid-level schmoe. Still, his arc introduces a lot of lore that comes up later, so this is still a worthy contact IMO. Operative Vargas (20-24). Vargas is what you get if an Arachnos soldier gets an MBA. His dialog is hilarious. Bobby Curtain (Nerva Archipelago, 25-29). This is for rogues only, but it's an unusual arc and well worth switching alignments for. Johnny Sonata (St. Martia, 35-39). Although I don't like Jezebel Jones's arc, Johnny's own mission arc has a really good story. Vernon von Grun (Grandville, 45-50). Now this is a cackling cartoon villain! I love von Gun's arc. Efficiency Expert Pither (Grandville, 45-50) Ambassador Kur'Rekt (Grandville, 40-44) Mr. G (St. Martial, 30-50). I think Mr. G's arc may be a better post-fall-of-Praetoria story than the hero equivalent. Recruiting a team of henchman makes you feel like you've become a real power. (I'd wait to do it at level 50+ after the Dark Astoria and incarnate trials, where it makes more sense in the overall story). Maybe it's blasphemy, but I think the red side endgame is much better than blue side. For heroes (mine, anyway), levels 40-50 are basically Tina McIntyre and Maria Jenkins, and that's about it. The other story arcs in that level range are really long and mostly date back to Issue 1—which means lots of unnecessary defeat-all missions and other mission-design sins that the devs were smart to move away from in later issues. But villains have so much to choose from at high levels. And the high levels are where things really get fun for a villain, especially if you held off on the Mr. G and Pandora's Box stories. Get yourself some minions, challenge Lord Recluse, beat up some heroes, and basically rule! Plus, the arcs tend to be short, which I prefer to the Issue 1 marathons on red side. I even like the patron arcs. Yes, they're all basically the same, and if "betraying" the patron is going to be such a major point (I mean, Scirocco in particular just won't stop whining about it), there ought to be a bigger element of choice. But they're pretty good at creating a feeling of moving up in the world of villainy. So, yeah. tl;dr: There's a lot I like about red side.

Is there any way to switch a character from Praetorian to a hero or villain before level 20? I rolled up a toon with the intent of running him through all the Praetorian content, but I'm realizing that the AT (AR/Inv Sentinel, FWIW) is going to be a slog. Null the Gull doesn't offer what I'm looking for—is this just a delete and re-roll situation?

It might be useful to add level ranges to the above text—I hadn't realized that Twilight's Son had a level cap for his missions. For some reason, I thought everyone in Ouroboros was good up to 50+. So there I was, looking for something to do at level 35 after finishing Night Ward, and I figured I'd do Twilight Son's arc. Kind of a surprise when he had nothing for me! Shauna Braun and Martin Weintraub are both (25-29), and Twilight's Son is (25-34). The Major is actually available at levels (30-40). I agree that it's worth doing for vigilantes, most of whom are probably just fine not "arresting" people. But I found this arc less engaging than other vigilante & rogue arcs, mostly because of the dead drop and keyword structure. BTW, if you think The Major's story is in slightly bad taste, have you done the tip missions to go from Vigilante to Villain? Some of those are pretty dark. But they're also really well done, IMO—some of the best missions in the game from a character story perspective. I highly recommend doing the alignment round trip through tip missions at least once.

Sure! But ideally, the difficulty slider would accommodate both billion-inf IO'd exemping incarnates looking for a challenge and less powerfully built leveling toons who want to be able to complete the mission. If +4/x8 and solo AVs aren't enough to do it at the high end, then that's something that could use some work. But at the same time, a mission should at least be possible to complete at the "easy" end of the slider. This one, for my particular build, isn't.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Obviously, I can only speak for myself, running the arc with a particular toon. That's not a bad idea, but IMO it needs more than the usual warning. IO sets have upped the power level so much that "<Arch-villain Name> is really tough, so you might want to bring some friends" translates to me as, "So you might want to turn the mission difficulty down from +4 on this one." This one needs a warning like, "No, really, I mean it—if you are trying to run this solo and you're not a fully-IO'd incarnate exemping down, just give up now." Obviously, it depends on the AT and powersets. I tried to run this with a toon (as I mentioned above, a level 30 Dual Pistol/Martial Combat blaster) who is taking the "slow path" through content. He has IOs, but not the most expensive ones. He's not min/maxed out, but I managed to get him to about 16% ranged defense, at least. His key to survival is damage and keeping everyone at ranged distance (or on their asses, or flying helplessly backwards through the air) through Ki Push, Dragon's Tail, and knockback effects. He dies quickly when overwhelmed with numbers in melee. I also have him doing the full-circle alignment path (through morality missions!) from hero to villain and back again; currently, he's a rogue in the process of redemption to a hero. He did The Graveyard Shift as a vigilante, and while it was challenging, none of the missions slammed him into a brick wall the way The Freakish Lab did. I'll put more specific notes about the arc in spoilers: Maybe it's just that I had the absolute wrong AT and build to try to solo this arc. But I also think that this is "Homecoming Hard," which means it was tuned to be challenging for people who powerleveled to 50, have fully-slotted powers full of IO sets, and are running the arc exemped down. Those toons will have a much easier time of the arc than mine did—and, needless to say, a toon from pre-IO-set Live, who would have just gotten access to SOs at level 30, would be paste on the floor of these missions. That brings up a larger question, I think, of what the target of a challenge should be. Is it the character who would have been expected in Live? Someone more current, who has access to IOs, but maybe not the most expensive of them yet, and is still leveling? Or is it a fully-IO'd incarnate exemped down? It seems to me like this mission was meant to be challenging to the latter, which makes it frustratingly impossible for my squishy blaster who is still in the process of leveling up.

You aren't missing anything. In the immortal words of Roger Ebert: I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated that arc. Hated the stupid escort mission that only told you it was an escort mission when you got halfway through. Hated the endless waves of minions that kept spawning over and over. Hated the "Map not available" maps that had no reason to be mapless. Hated the way all the clever dialog would hit the screen at once—usually while you were trying to fight the aforementioned hordes of minions and didn't exactly have a leisurely moment for reading. Hated the massive walls of text. Hated the mission where you had to keep several trigger-happy NPCs alive through a long sewer map. But most of all, I hated how completely unbalanced it is compared to every other redside arc. Some of the writing is funny. But it's not worth it for how painful the story arc is to play. There's at least one mission that was completely impossible with my L30 DP/MC IO'd blaster (even at -1/x0). Not challenging, not incredibly difficult, but "there's no fscking way I can beat this guy solo, let alone with hordes of other mobs spawning during the battle." First time I had to autocomplete because of mission difficulty in a long, long time. And the arc is so. damn. long. The Graveyard Shift is a frickin' masterpiece compared to The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok. (Apologies to the author: I know a lot of work went into it. But it's just not fun to play.)

Hah! There's slow, and then there's crawling. There are only so many times I need to see the scenery of a tram station. :)

I'll second this. The story line is a classic of the genre and features a couple of challenging missions that use mechanics not seen a lot elsewhere in the game. It's a "must-do" IMO and well worth inclusion in the guide. Spoiler tags for the arc, in case anyone wants to be surprised when they do it: Roy Cooling's arc doesn't have to be done after the other two, but his last mission gives you an additional option if you did the other ones first. So I'd do them in this order: Keith Nance (20-29) > Jenni Adair (20-29) > Roy Cooling (20-29) I'd also suggest doing Mercedes Sheldon's (20-25) arcs. They're fairly short, have a good story, and are mostly stealthable. Christine Lansdale (25-29) has another strong arc that I think is the player's first introduction to a major villain faction: One final note: some of these are old-school arcs that will send you hopping all over Paragon City, so I'd recommend having some fast cross-zone travel powers set up to make that less painful.

Build 2 is a big improvement, thanks. Being able to get access to LRT by accessing any one exploration badge in the zone makes that much more useful, IMO. And the Fast Travel menu fixes the tray clutter issue. But the fast travel menu is also kind of a hack that highlights what I think is still a problem: multiple travel powers are treated as a necessity. As I said above, multiple travel powers are fine as long as a player only needs one of them. I don't think you're quite there yet with 10-minute cooldowns for the non-day-job powers—that will be a problem for a majority of users (by your own data!) unless people get all the powers.