nihilii

Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls Council!

I'm not sure I understand anything in your post as a reply to mine, so maybe that's on me. But here goes. I'm not suggesting buying is the main way to get them. It seems much more efficient to run weekly TFs and the odd Hard Mode TF on a low advanced difficulty tier. What I'm saying is regardless, there's a skill-agnostic path to get costumes at a decent rate. I doubt people are running Hard mode TFs for money at scale. Simply because if they did, the price of prismatic aethers would necessarily decrease from overabundance of supply dumped on the market.

At 3M ~ 3M5 per prismatic on the market you could run whatever content you want (at lvl 50) and earn them at a decent pace. Let's say you make 20M inf per hour, that's 5-6 prismatic. Which makes a standard costume in 2 hours of generic play. A rare costume in 20 hours of play. Then the ultra rare tiers in 50 hours and 300 hours... Ok, now these are getting in excessive territory and you'd definitely want to do something more optimal than baseline 20M/inf hour. It seems to me for most costumes, the pace is reasonable. As the price that's relevant 90%+ of the time is 10 prismatics. Playing a couple hours to get a fun new cool costume sounds about right, it's a good side objective. I understand the difference in game design specifically with the previous pattern of getting everything. At the same time, we could instead look at all the things we previously got for free - they're still there, for free. Those new costumes are an optional new system on top, which we can use or ignore. It's true this sucks for the compulsive-completionist types who need to have it all and need to have it now. Always a difficult balance there: do you deprive the rest of the playerbase of super longtail progression goals, or do you make the game a grind for those completionists?

Cleave is stellar as a ST attack and frequently hits multiples while using it as a ST attack and making no effort whatsoever to aim. Not only that, it's *ranged*. Skipping Cleave on modern Battle Axe is like skipping Focus on Claws. I'd encourage anyone judging the power off spreadsheet numbers to try it out ingame. It plays a lot better than it might look in theory. Cleave -> Pendulum -> Cyclone is the ultimate 0 effort rotation to clear groups of mobs. Cleave -> Swoop -> Gash -> Chop is a great low effort rotation for ST that also happens to deal AoE damage without trying. Cleave is the cornerstone of nuAxe. Heck, it's such a fun power on its own I have on occasion gotten away with spamming nothing but Cleave. No need to aim, no need to close in melee range, just tab and smack a couple foes with T9 damage. *Maybe* you could build without it, but that seems dangerously unfun to me. YMMV.

The Ice Blast port for Sentinels had a couple of awkward changes, like the beloved Freeze Ray turning into the slower animating with worse mez effect Chilling Ray. It also has the Blaster (slower) version of the Ice Blast power. This turns the set into a pretty slow set. Only Bitter Ice Blast and Ice Bolt animate fast, and you likely don't want Ice Bolt anyway. The old Sentinel meta was also to take epic Dominate and proc it out mostly with hold damage procs. This rubs against Bitter Freeze Ray, who also can use hold procs (the purple one being the big concern). This is not as important today, but could have mattered in the past. It's also debatable whether Sentinel nuke normalization is kind to Blizzard. You get a faster ticking but slower duration power. It's not necessarily bad compared to the original Blizzard; but relative to other Sentinel nukes which sometimes retain the full strength of their secondary effects coupled with a faster time, perhaps it plays a role? Maybe there is a perception of weakness because of any or all of the above.

lvl 50 AVs rather than GMs. As John mentioned, an optimized solo character can do it. The average team of 8 should do the trick, provided at least 5-6 of the players move relatively fast from Pylon to Pylon. Then you break up the crates on the ship, and everyone leaves the team to click on bombs as a separate "team". Then you reinvite everyone for the bowl party. It takes slightly more coordination than usual, but I'd say that's on par with what is expected in an incarnate trial, for example. So, doable even on pickup groups - even if not a guarantee. 🙂

Ya, that's my asterisk part. If you feel confident in your ability to handle +3/x8, go for it. (although I would always go Scrapper, and never Brute. The ~20% damage difference refers to that. Between Brute and Tanker the gap is closer, as Bio is heavy on damage boosting and Brutes get less absolute and even less relative boosts than Tankers there.) "built right" is also a tricky proposition. If you shoot for too many defense bonuses on a TW/Bio Brute, if you go Barrier rather than Ageless, you're going to lose some of that damage gap with the Tanker who is built fully offensive. Perhaps even all of that damage gap... Perhaps the Tanker will even outdamage the Brute when all is said and done. Personally I find I can always use survivability up to Tanker levels and beyond. For me, a Scrapper or even a Brute would not even come close to cutting it in a solo no insps no incarnates +4/x8 MoITF, for example. I tried - I wipe on regular groups. Even when situations don't directly result in death, extra survivability often gives more leeway to lay down maximum offense rather than focus on survivability clicks.

Tanker is the best option here, and in general. Offensive Tanker tends to beat Defensive Scrapper/Brute in overall efficiency, for most +3/x8 solo scenarios*. Tankers more or less sacrifice ~20% damage output for >4x survivability. Even though TW was specifically excluded from some of the Tanker buffs, it's still a beast of a set. And a Bio Tanker gets to enjoy the 90% resistance cap, as well as higher base health and max health scaling extremely well with +absorb, +regen and heals. I have both tw/bio and bio/tw Scrappers and Tankers (no Brutes because lolBrutes... unfortunately). The Scrapper is an absolute beast for burst damage, and very high up in sustained. Still one of the top tier combos to this day. But the Tanker still does respectable numbers. As a reference point, I built that bio/tw Tanker to attempt the solo Master of ITF +4/x8 without incarnate powers or inspirations challenge, and I *almost* could make it. Missing just the tiniest bit of damage output and/or survivability to handle +4 Romulus and Nictus without pulling tricks. But it soloed the previous mission (level 54 Romulus archvillain, level 54 Requiem archvillain) just fine. Without incarnates! That's damage alright. FWIW and as an aside, I would not run a tw/bio Scrapper in Defensive + Nerve. Capitalize on your damage, run Musculature + Offensive. Scrappers can grab Shadow Meld if they need to shore up their defenses. This stacks extremely well with bio armor, pushing your defenses above the softcap and possibly into incarnate softcap range. - (*one COULD make the argument the Scrapper has *enough* survivability if played well, so the Tanker survivability is overkill and the Scrapper is therefore better. I personally die enough against the strongest factions I find use for extra survivability, but YMMV depending on your skill level.)

In this Mender Ramiel mission, the Incarnate DoT proc you get ends up outpacing any other kind of damage you may have. A defender spamming 1s animation attacks would outDPS a scrapper using 2s animation attacks.

At first, I liked the idea. Unfortunately, some other posters have made good points. The careful, delicate balance of the game, beautifully folded over ten thousand times by the dreams of Jack Emmert, the tears of Positron and the expert hands of our Homecoming devs stands on the edge of a precipice. It's clearly all reliant on Energy Blast remaining exactly as it is today. By giving esoteric proc builds the option of reaching +30% damage in a couple powers, we risk a great migration of Fire Blasters rushing to throw their alts into the flaming pits of King Midas in order to reroll Energy Blasters. Do not indulge considerations of Blaze animating twice as fast as Power Burst. Do not listen to those who would claim semi-optimized teams can nullify knockback, and would argue Energy blast builds without KB-to-KD procs would necessarily exist today if Energy blast was overly broken in that manner. Those are lies of heretics. We must remain steadfast in our defense against the great Power Creep monster. As a great philosopher once said... "An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded."

This can even be compounded for dedicated highend builds by going into the Speed pool to take Burnout, which lets you double up on the Cold -RES but does nothing for Rad. As the gameplay loop looks like "run a lot, then obliterate a tough target, then run a lot, then obliterate a tough target"... The ability to spike -RES to 120% per character is more valuable than its temporary nature would suggest.

Thought this was a thread about exemplaring. From our resident level-locked-at-20? Madness! And I still fell for it. Well played, Doug. Well played.

2 commands: /savetray - saves your power trays in a text file. /loadtray - loads your power trays from the text file. If there is any conflict on a hotkey, that hotkey is simply a blank spot. It would be wonderful quality of life for respecs.

I could see adding Carnival spawnpoints on the rooftops. In Paragon they're the socialites doing bad things behind closed doors. You'd expect them to have parties on highrises and such.

Literally came to post this. Power Crash changes from a skip on Scrappers to surprise Crowd Control on Stalkers. Would you like to spam TF and ET and have a third hightier attack in AS *and* stack a meaty cone on top? Why yes, yes you may. Please take a complementary 100% chance for AS stack with your cone my good sir.

While there is no large difference to be sure, I think KM is consistently worse at this point due to the buffs other sets got. i.e., it used to be CS wasn't horribly long for this class of big hitters, compared to Total Focus and old Energy Transfer. But TF got sped up, new ET can be fast, EM was ported to scrappers. Stone was also ported to scrappers with its lightning fast Seismic Smash. Focused Burst is fairly bad compared to Focus, and even Serpent's Reach is ahead. It's good compared to Impale, which itself could use help... There is also Cleave now that trumps all of these options except arguably Focus. Burst and its 3s animation for 8ft radius standard AoE damage is in the worst AoE category. It shares this category with several other medium tier sets like Broad Sword, Dual Blades, War Mace, so it's not alone there, but it's still the worst PBAoE you can get; and KM is relatively unique compared to the other sets I list in having no other credible AoE option. Dual Blades and War Mace both have great cones as staple powers, even Broad Sword can get some use out of Slice. With KM the best you're going to get is Repulsing Torrent with a KB-to-KD IO. Repulsing Torrent has a lengthy animation and forces you to reposition, both things that go against Power Siphon's stacks and generally makes this a lesser option than what those other powersets have. This is right on the money, and to me this is the issue in a nutshell. I built a KM/ice the other day. Then I swapped to Claws in Mids, and just about everything was better. As it is right now, KM is "less good Claws". You can work with the KM gimmicks and squeeze all the juice you can out of it, and you end up slightly behind. (and I'm talking Scrappers. If we look at Brutes or Tankers, all bets are off, because Brute/Tanker Claws has buffed up values by default *and* the KM Power Siphon mechanic isn't as strong on Brutes) Then there's the structural KM issues. Power Siphon mechanics force you in a constant hit strategy that plays against epic snipes, misc clicks, fast-paced play when you move and switch target every 2 seconds, let alone every 20. CS doesn't crit "properly". Also, Quick Strike still has this awkward +0.7 KB value (instead of usual +0.67 KB for melee knockdowns), turning your weakest punch from a knockdown to a knockback on level 50s once you're levelshifted. Giant pet peeve of mine!! 😂 My list of changes for KM would be (relatively) conservative. No need to buff the set to godhood, but let's shine a light on opportunity cost, and tweak animation times to fit this. - Power Siphon from 2.112s to 1s or less - Concentrated Strike from 3s to 2.4s (comparable powers: slightly faster than TF, slightly slower than KO blow, slower than Seismic Smash, same length as Rend Armor) - Focused Burst from 2.2s to 1.8s - Burst from 3s to 2s - Repulsing Torrent from 2.2s to 1.6s. Make it a mini Shockwave instead of an instant skip. Change all of this and change just this, and let's see how KM performs.

The new Sonic Vibrations gives you a single -12% res that replaces itself with each application, and a -8% res lasting 8 seconds that can stack. Unless you want to apply -res to multiple targets, you can stick to the ST chain.

As someone who actually likes changes even the crazy ones, I get the temptation to try different private servers but I always stop short because there's so many hoops to jump. It feels like if you want to go on anything else, you have to join a Discord server, beg a GM in DM for an account, download specific launchers, mess with paths. So much work! There's no forums either, so you have to guess just about everything or hunt for info in the Discord I guess. Am I offbase? Is there actually a simpler process to try out these alternate servers?

I have nothing to add except agree with Uun on every single point. Siren's Song does almost twice the damage of Howl (and ~150% Shockwave damage), it's absolutely massive. On top of that, sleep as part of your damage rotation is quite useful: drops toggles on lieuts (think tsoo sorcerers), and whenever you need room to breathe you can stop AoEing and switch to ST. I personally run and chain all 3 cones, but Shockwave is the one that gets kicked out first. From your original build you want to drop Shriek, now that we can grab the T2 at level 1. Screech -> Shout -> Scream is the new attack chain, it flows beautifully.

Indeed, FF/sonic is pretty good for a passive one-shot wonder. Putting the very first attack on auto lets you stack about -36% res on its own, plus the slight damage it does. That's more than a full-strength defender debuff. You can also stuff the defender procs in there to get aggro. On picking a different support set, FF is near the best you're going to get for a passive approach. Sonic is another good option. You get an extra -30% res toggle you can slap on your main and never worry about. So, make that sonic/sonic, you're going to maintain ~-66% on singletargets. If you want to try a tanker, think Shield. Slotted Grant Cover will give your main +16% defense for free. As for a secondary, /rad is often a good pick: you have Irradiated Radiation dealing damage passively, you can auto Atom Smasher if you need AoE output, Radioactive Smash if you need ST, Radiation Siphon if you need survivability for your tanker. Picking /soul as an epic tends to be an even greater choice than it already is for normal characters, because the "ranged" part of Gloom becomes even more valuable (characters on autofollow will often be out of melee range, without careful positioning on your end). The one potential dealbreaker with Shield is the click mez protection. If you're not averse to tabbing every now and then, that's fine. It doesn't have to be every 2 minutes, mind you. Typically I've found it's not needed to actually activate the mez protection unless you're mezzed. A shield tanker will be softcapped, so few hits are going through to start with.

I run +4/x8 as default (+3/x8 while leveling, to avoid +5s), but I'm not shy about switching to +0/x8 if I'm getting my ass kicked. It's rare I lower the player count below x8. I love fighting hordes.

BEAM! Beam was my great self-discovery. I struggled to click with the set before, but the changes made it snap together for me. It helps that we're unbound to the T1/T2 attacks now. Because Beam has lengthy animation times. Running Disintegrate -> Lancer Shot -> Piercing Beam is now viable, never have to dip into the T1/T2.

It's absolutely wild to me we got away getting almost the same base damage as Blasters. I'm never complaining about the "Sentinels suck" crowd ever again.

I think many enemy groups have some level of defense debuffs (i.e. even lolCouncil has machine guns), highlevel CoT is fairly unique in having nothing. But your main point resonates, of course. Defense debuffs truly are the ace in the hole... This makes for an even more brutal contrast within CoT, as their earlier units have access to some of the most potent defense debuffs ingame: location-based, autohit, coupled with slows. Nasty stuff! To go from that to nothing at all makes quite the difference.

FWIW I actually tend to run super tight characters for accuracy, aiming for 95% tohit against +3s (given finalized builds are alphashifted) and no more. Yet even when leveling, +4 death mages don't seem to pose much of a threat. A simple event motivated me to (finally) post this. I went AFK entering a CoT tip mission. Came back 10 minutes later to see a +3/x8 ambush whacking on me, still at half life. This is silly. Level 30 CoT (or whichever level range gets the quicksand guys) upscaled to level 50 would have destroyed this character through defense debuffs. Fundamentally, I don't see the logic in arguing level 50 CoT should be weaker than level 20 CoT. Not quoting you specifically here Yomo, not even subquoting anyone else, I just don't see the logic either from a game design rationale or from an ingame universe rationale.