nihilii

Alas, the superpowered top hatters have abandoned Wentsworth and trade from the comfort of their private islands with /ah. Re: inf cap, rather than code tweaks with unintended consequences, we could make a "1 billion influence certificate" you could buy for, well, 1 billion influence at your friendly NPC vendor, and sell back for 1 billion influence as well. Stack as many of these as you want, convert back when you need liquid influence.

I feel OP has a simple complaint. One should be able to disagree with it yet understand where he's coming from. "I could solo task X and get reward Y before, now I cannot". The ability to still solo task X only addresses half of the complaint when reward Y is not awarded anymore. And task X being intended as a team effort, whether true or not in a vacuum, is plain offtopic in this context. @Bionic_Flea really solved the whole topic 4 pages ago, and we're running in circles since. Master badges should have remained as such, and any new Master challenges should have gone with the old restrictions. New Grandmaster badges should have been introduced with the extra "no incarnates" requirement. Takes nothing away from anyone, and only adds options and rewards. Consistency across the board, *and* new shinies on top. Perhaps this will be considered in the future, anyway? There's nothing preventing devs from implementing the above in a future update.

Unless you want Soul Storm, the first thing I'd switch would be Soul Storm for Shadow Meld. Gets you one more LotG, and is an otherwise amazing power for /bio.

1 has truth to it. Although less truth here, there is much less interest in raids and pvp, and these communities often feel just as ostracized as the roleplayers here... The forum trend is clearly lvl 50 PvE. 2 would imply so very little faith in developers. It would be against all common sense to balance based on anecdotal evidence when you've got tons of hard data at your disposal. 3 is an exaggeration in the other direction. It's much more often than every few days. Some posters make their entire forum identity about being a pseudo-roleplayer-lowlevel-anti-powergamingmunchkin-contrarian. You are yourself a poster child for this archetype, and it is very rare to see a post of yours that doesn't allude to this in some way. Or, perhaps more accurately... The whole idea of "counterbalance" is biaised to start with. This is a RPG game in which defeating enemies gives you experience, and your character gains levels and abilities. Numerical progression and growth is the core loop in that game. By playing the game, characters naturally grow more powerful. People discuss how to slot their abilities efficiently, because progress is the natural course of the game, and making rational choices is itself a normal part of the human experience. Going out of your way to play lowbies exclusively is special behavior. So is purposefully choosing to slot things inefficiently. There is a distinction here that is often exploited by contrarians: slotting things inefficiently on purpose is not the same as simply not knowing how to slot things yet. This game, like any game or universe, like real life itself, has rules. The player who doesn't understand the rules of this game universe yet is very different from the player who purposefully rejects these rules, much like someone who hasn't learned yet the earth is round or flat is not the same as a flat earther. Likewise with playing lowbies because you've only got 1-2 hours of gaming time per week and other games you like, vs the guy who's been a regular for years and specifically turns off XP at level 15. These are not remotely the same. It's disingenuous, and I would argue purposefully so, to lob in casual players in with the contrarian crowd. Most people are interested in learning more. Most people, when given the opportunity, go for their hero feeling powerful. Hence why we indeed have subforums filled with discussions on how to get most, or at least more, out of your toon. Hence why the AE changes, the double XP boosts, the more accessible IOs are widely used. Hence why a greater share of the playerbase is playing at level 50 now than before. This is what I see SuperPlyx reacting to, and I'm in full agreement with it. Not only there's some sort of weird bragging involved in contrarian posts, there's often negativity emanating from these posts. It's like you have to make a point you're better than the rest of us, based on some elusive quality that obviously cannot be defined by numbers ("ah! how simple-minded you all are, for you cannot ascertain the spiritual undercurrents of my superior playstyle"). All too often, this attitude comes down to people who want to compete, but can't compete, and solve that cognitive dissonance by convincing themselves 1) they don't want to compete, and 2) they are in fact winning by a different set of undefined rules in which they are always the victor. Sometimes the cognitive dissonance remains too great, so the need comes to bring down people who are just playing normally with negativity. It's just annoying, man. If you truly like playing lowbies so much for the sake of it, I don't see where the need for being obnoxious about it arises. "Helpless devs might get confused and balance the game around forum posters" is such a paper thin excuse. Not to mention amusingly ironic, as it is fairly obvious the antipower contrarians would be the ones twisting game balance development, in a hypothetical scenario in which game devs balanced the game around forum posts...

Oh. My. God. I think this warrants moderators obliterate your entire account, post history and all. It's only fair.

My whining will drown out the previous Rage threads if this is ever a topic up for discussion.

They really are influence sinks. Increasing the supply of catalysts or converters doesn't matter, because you don't buy catalysts or converters for influence at the vendor. At worst you could argue it transfers the influence sink from buying catalysts/converters from another player to buying a super pack, and/or that the increased supply results in a proportional decrease in prices for a net neutral influence sink (but this would assume a level of price elasticity I'm not sure is present, I think there's significant inertia to CoH prices). The only thing that can generate inf is defeating enemies or selling items to vendors. With a Super Pack, inf is destroyed when you buy it, and inf is destroyed again if you flip it. For the economy as a whole it's actually better for a Pack to be flipped than simply bought at the standard price: ( 10% of 10M + 10% of ~20M ) > 10% of 25M

I'd shoot for buying loads of a random useless proc that could sell an appropriate patch-related narrative. Example: with I27 buffing Elec Blast, I'd buy all "Tempest: chance for end drain" on the market at up to 10M per proc. 50B would let me do that up to 5000 times, which hopefully would start people wondering if there's something neat related to end drain they're missing out on... But it's a balancing act getting the word out to confuse many players before a savvy marketer finds the opportunity to arbitrage with converters. Perhaps I'd limit my buys to, say, 200M per day max, so there would always be significant upward pressure but not so much I drain my Chaos Fund in a couple weeks. Keeping this up over months ought to make for confusion.

Out of AVs / special encounters, it seems mostly standard mezzes. I'm currently multiboxing it on Relentless, with characters without Fear/Confuse protection; which gives me a lot of time in between faceplants to contemplate what kills me. Usually, it comes down to stacked buffs and debuffs - or the Goldbricker boss explosion, which seems to kill even a Tanker at the HP cap.

If you skip Recon, IH and MoG, I doubt the Sentinel port would save the powerset for you. You'd essentially be getting a minor +absorb, and that's it. Much better off playing Willpower.

I think Stone is now firmly in the top three with the I27 changes. With secondaries, EM is awesome. SS is also incredible in different ways (especially if you leverage Rage to the fullest, which generally means Gloom and maybe Cross Punch). I think Rad Melee also has its spot on the top3, between a full proc slotted Irradiated Ground for mindboggling passive damage and Build Up + Radiation Siphon offering a sizeable and reliable heal on a high damage attack. All combos of these 3 primaries (Shield, Invul, Stone) and these 3 secondaries (EM, SS, Rad) will do very well.

I really really like them actually, I think you have a great sense for color composition.

I haven't even bothered to respec my Tankers yet, but even as a pure Granite build, I'm enjoying the ability to do slight hops. Rooted not rooting makes fast travel safer. Come to think, I really need to respec so I can reslot Stone Skin properly. /stone now having standard movement outside of Granite is an absolute game changer. IMHO, Hjarki's approach above will be the objective best in most cases. Run in standard armors most of the time, pop in Granite when the going gets tough. With the knowledge Granite is perma, this is a significantly different flow from other T9s where you're always bound by a time limit.

Sweet costumes.

It's fair to say Tankers and Brutes get more out of /bio survivability, because +regen and +absorb both scale extremely well with maxHP. But I also agree, I've never felt /bio struggle for survivability even on scrappers. If anything, the layered defenses and copious amounts of absorb stack beautifully with the tools we have. 2 luck insps turn your average /bio scrapper into a pretty tough guy. If one dislikes insps, Shadow Meld fills the gap. /bio is also the powerset least likely to make damage sacrifices in order to get Barrier, as all the endurance management tools can let you skip Ageless. Finally, there's also the option to use defensive adaptation when the going gets rough. I would assume most of us run in offensive 99% (if not 99.999%) of the time, and it makes it easy to think of it as the baseline... But defensive is just one fast activation away, and it really does make you significantly tougher.

I'm with Snarky here. This proc used to be much better, but since the PPM change it mostly covers the end you're using activating Dark Regen - unless you're also heavily slotted for end reduction and always surrounded by crowds. That 20 feet range and 30s recharge hurts proc rate bad. More power to anyone who gets great use out of it, but I don't even bother to slot it anymore. Would rather rely on Recovery Serums while leveling and Ageless once at the Incarnate level. Theft of Essence is actually so much better on Bio and Rad, but neither of these powersets are lacking in native endurance management.

A sizeable improvement anyone can make to their loading speed is turning off vsync. Which you might want to anyway, as it improves responsiveness. My loading times look like the loading times in the record videos, on a medium range gaming laptop with a SSD, while keeping graphic settings cranked up pretty high.

I went through it blind and solo at +0/x8 so I could take my time and appreciate everything. What an amazing piece of content. I like that I don't understand half of what is posted in this thread either, I'm guessing there's significant content changes once you raise the new difficulty settings. Also, the writer deserves an award for coming up with the first instance of an actually funny "boomer" joke in human history.

SR. The Sentinel version gets toggle mez protection *and* endurance recovery *and* a fast +absorb power. Beauty. Regen is also arguably better on Sentinels than on other ATs, but, well... It's still Regen.

I had a kneejerk reaction to the sleep change at first. I guess the design goal here might be for sleeps to get a buff against normal mobs, but for players to actually still slot their Sleeps and still be exposed to a small chance of failure in situations where they permasleep AV groups to focus on them 1 by 1. It seems like a convoluted solution, but fair enough.

And Bodyguard wasn't even a thing back then. MMs were just supposed to tank... somehow, with their fragile pets and no native aggro control. Or wasn't the idea MMs would use their pets to soak the alpha, then Brutes would jump in to handle the survivors? Cool idea, in theory.

Given that you mention temps, I will assume you're not opposed to insps. I think the easiest path here is to rely heavy on procs for your single target attacks, build for ~20% defense to all, and chomp on 2+ luck insps a minute to survive, converting every other insp type to lucks. I'm not seeing Water Jet in your build, isn't it the best ST attack for Water? (I'm not familiar with that primary) If you're going for /psi mastery, you could also replace Arcane Bolt for a procced out Dominate.

I love love love VS as a toggle. For me, it is all pros. Previously: if I want VS, I must to spend a 3.3s cast and aim a target reticle (or make a macro for it). Every. Single. Minute. Now: if I get mezzed, I have to recast VS. As long as I don't get mezzed at least twice per minute, I'm better off; and if I'm getting mezzed that often, I probably have bigger concerns and VS' tiny pew pew won't save my hide anyway.

Interesting! I can't say that I have, but it's likely I don't pay enough attention to notice either way.

Like Bill and Zag said, I'd attribute most of the popularity to the oldschool 12+ imps Fulcrum Shifted. That, plus I think there was a time when epic Fireball used to do blaster-level damage with Containment on top, so it was about twice as strong as a normal Fireball. Then you added FS and the numbers got ridiculous. I vaguely recollect this around I5.