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Let's see, lame ideas and topics, concepts for my future Clown Masterminds: Clown/Dark Miasma - A black and white clown, or Goth Clown Clown/Force Field - The name will have bubbles in it, darn it Clown/Nature Affinity - I wonder if the name 'Twiggy' is taken on my server Clown/Pain Domination - Here is your evil/menacing clown look Clown/Poison - Maybe an evil nurse look. . . but you know, a clown evil nurse. Clown/Sonic Resonance - Think 80s hip hop but a clown, use the stereo thing too much Clown/Storm Summoning - Weird clown weather guy that drives you crazy with a multi-colored Hurricane (note groups would hate looking at that) Clown/Thermal Radiation - I wonder if "Hot Bo Bo" is taken on my server Clown/Time Manipulation - Maybe a rif off Doc Brown from Back to the Future, but, you know, a clown Clown/Traps - Yeah, what is the name of that clown in the recent horror movie franchise that makes you cut off an arm and do other stupid stuff? Clown/Trick Arrow - Bonzo Tell? Totally in Green like Errol Fynn's Robinhood but a clown face, and shoes, got to have the shoes. Clown/Electrical Affinity - The high voltage look Clown/Cold Domination - Bo Bo Frost? Clown/Radiation Emission - I wonder if "Love Da Bomb" is taken on my server. Clown/Empathy: Hugs the Clown? Clown/Kinetics: Normal looking, for a clown, but some form of a Zoom joke in the name. Clown/Not Appearing in this Update: Well, that's pie in my face but I'm sure whatever the Devs put in will be fun!

Recipe?

Yeah, but we haven't chased you down with torches and pitchforks for not telling us what is in the update . . . . yet. Hum, come to think of it, I do play on the Torchbearer server.

I was thinking Clowns/Pain Domination for the 'sad clown' motif, but Kinetics would be great if you could add in a yakety saks sound in there. . .

I would know and be enlightened and then I would do things like: Enjoy Regen before the incoming nerf, about time if you ask me Plan names for my incoming Clown and Pirate masterminds! Oh, and then I can start a debate if Ninja or Pirate masterminds are better! Sure, Ninjas have their problems, but the movement speed reduction for the Pirates due to the peg legs gets old. Old school internet arguments rise again! and get more excited than I already am! <Thanks Devs for all you do, even though I have no idea what is really coming because Troo won't tell me>

I keep encountering the Map Server event from time to time without the spawns. . . . (I kid, I kid) While the idea of a Rikti Mother ship over Atlas City Hall on July 4th has a certain ring to it, give existing nemesis a color update (red white and blue Jeagers would be fun) a new alternate world Nemesis invasion with the False Nemesis altered to look like Uncle Sam (Change the color scheme and give him a top hat). Have the Nemesis fight everything with cheesy patriotic dialog that they are here to liberate this world from it's oppressors, it is Independence Day! Basically a dialog and color scheme revamp of the Nemesis Plot Invasion Event. Maybe throw in spawns from the alternate Counsel worlds invading too agroing on everything. Everybody likes beating up on those guys and I enjoy villian groups fighting against each other.

And the ghosts of normal people walking in the fog as if they were continuing their normal lives. Always liked the original Dark Astoria from a visuals standpoint.

Too many players are more interested in the destination of 50 rather than the journey. With that being said, some of the early launch missions are not super exciting. I wish we could get more people to start out with Matthew Habashy as a first contact. That is a fine story based experience. I understand the Flambeaux hate, but running Matthew's arc then twinshot is a nice intro to the game.

While I would love to have Wind Control, and I'm betting a good number of existing in-game textures could transfer over, I can just see the forums start talking again how Wind's level 18 power of Keening Winds is better than Mind Control's lvl 32 Mass Confusion like how we already talk about how Plant's level 8 Seeds of Confusion is better. Still would love to have Wind Control. . .

The fast travel/teleport ability you can either be logged into and hang around Pocket D for an hour or you can find all of the Exploration badges for one zone. It is actually pretty easy to get all the exploration badges now without resulting to the wiki or vidmaps. When you fight enemies in a zone, there is a chance that when you defeat them you will receive a tip. (Chances are higher with the higher power the foe is, bosses better chance lts or minions for example. Level does not matter, nor does your it matter if you outlevel them. Grey enemies can give you tips. Tips then lead to exploration badges. One note, once you have the fast travel power, you need to have an exploration badge for the zone you want to teleport into. For Ouroboros portal, you can get it through certain missions, I highly recommend the Faultline arcs. The easiest ways is to have someone drop one and just use it. The Chimerrora portal is inside the Midnighters club house. Go in, go up stairs and through the door. The portal is a clickie an an alcove.

Sorry, don't mean to interrupt, please feel free to give me more details about things to be excited about. . . . (Hey, it's worth a try!)

I've got a 50 Demon/EA that I've enjoyed taking to 50 and beyond. I haven't seen it mentioned here, but you might want to consider Ninjas. I'm running a set with Trick Arrow that I've gotten to 45 so far and they do a good job going through mobs. Healing, absorb and 'thunder dome' will help mitigate their lack of defense. The only real negative is the lack of a mule to take all the MM unique pet IOs. Also, Discharge will give you some good AoE Debuf on Damage. Plus, you could do a pretty good 'Big Trouble in Little China' theme.

Me too and since the meta was you're, essentially, fighting the game gone wrong, it makes sense to have things happen that normally couldn't. Great job by the Devs! I appreciate all you do for us!

It's location helps keep down the riff-raff and helps ensure a better experience for their exclusive cliental.

Yeah, I've never heard of anything being stolen from them! /s

Yes, bring in the clowns. . . . Let rampant speculation begin and thanks to you and all the Devs for keeping adding new content!

Been there, soloed a lot of characters to 50 by playing through content. Had many times in which an ambush would come and attack my solo character even when my character was invisible. OP is suggesting a change to the mechanic/mission design of the game, one that would damage what I enjoy for the game. As OP is suggesting a change, OP has the burden of supporting that change especially since he is trying to force his style of playing on to mine by trying to get the game changed. This isn't I farm/I play content, this is make changes to how certain missions work to accommodate how I prefer to play. OP's character is not being made useless, OP is having to adapt to encountering enemies that are coming at him ready to attack rather than being able to dictate the battle field for when OP is recharged and ready to go and getting the first shot in. OP is complaining that it is harder to protect a fragile NPC when there are a larger number of enemies because he set the mission to have a larger number of enemies. Part of the challenge is to protect the NPC, that isn't only being able to take down a group of enemies, it is doing so in a way that keeps the NPC safe. It should be harder to do that when you set your mission difficulty for a higher level then your character and for a larger party size. Some times you pop inspirations when you get the idea an ambush is coming, they are about as good as end mission bosses about keeping their mouths shut. Maybe you even run off from the NPC you are protecting so you keep the incoming mobs away from them. There are ways to do it, and it is harder when you increase the level of the enemies and the number of them. As it should be. If you increase the challenge level, gasp, you increase the challenge. There should be a chance of failure, the chance of failure should increase as the difficulty increases. Protecting an NPC should be harder on a solo character versus a group, especially at higher difficulty levels. Catching a single fleeing mob should be harder for a single character than a group. This is a feature not a flaw.

Absolutely, but there is also a big difference between fighting mobs that are standing around doing nothing until you launch your attack versus mobs running in to attack you. I would bet that ambush your talking about, if it was like the rest of the mobs in the mission waiting for you to do something before acting, you could have handled it. There is a big change when the mobs aren't giving you the equivalent of a DnD surprise round. Frankly, I don't see this as auto fail I see it as working as designed. If you are going to take on higher difficulties, you should have a higher chance at failure. If there is not a chance at failure then what is the point? You said I'll do something that the developers have set in their guidelines that is of a reasonable difficulty for a group of 4 at a level higher than you take a character into, you took an added challenge for higher rewards (more xp and inf than running the mission as +0/1). It seems that the concern is when the challenge isn't just damage x mobs to defeat when you get to dictate when the fight starts and get first shot but rather when it requires keeping the NPC safe by healing, keeping aggro off, or keeping the AoEs falling in an area the NPC isn't. On a don't let NPC escape, if you guess the wrong corridor and the NPC escapes by going the way you didn't or couldn't cover due to group size, or when there is a lot of enemies, again due to the mission being set up for a larger number of players, and the NPC can slip out among the masses, then failure is absolutely valid. The vast majority of my play is Solo. I have 10 lvl 50s and all but one has all the incarnate levels unlocked. I run them at difficulties I'm comfortable with that fit my play style. Now that I've played more and want to level up faster, I run double xp until late 40s as the amount of Inf I get playing my 50s funds other characters and to speed up leveling. I also rotate between alts to take advantage of patrol xp. I have a ton of characters between 20 and 50 to rotate between. The possibility to fail a mission is a feature not a flaw. An increase in that possibility when you take on mission sizes designed for larger groups is similarly a feature.

That's where I'm at. I mainly solo, but I watch general chat and help discussions. Things have started to, in my opinion, get quiet lately. I enjoy this game as a stress relief and, frankly, I haven't found anything else like it so I really want this to continue. . .

Out of curiosity, and its been two years, is is possible to get an update? If we can't do player base size/active size, can we get an update on the AT breakdown? Thanks for all you guys do.

Very interesting, a thought about Force Move and as I have no programing knowledge what so ever feel free to immediately discard this. . . . Force Move seems like an interesting basis for a control power. Imagine a power, call it, Gather, that has a large AoE that causes foes to be compelled to move from their scattered group into the proverbial 'Fireball Formation'. So many times in missions, enemies are scattered on the set up, not as Covid social distancing, but to avoid AoEs. There are complaints from melee and AoE blasters when Controlers us an immobilize power early and the enemies stay scattered. In a way it is a control power because when an enemy is moving it is not attacking. (In that way the knock powers are damage mitigation powers, it the enemy is getting up it is not using that time to attack.) Thematically, forcing an enemy to walk and gather in a spot is different from a power drawing them in (which can be fun too). Just a thought, and Thank you for all that you do!

I have a Electrical Blast/Electricity Manipulation blaster in his early 40s that is fun and does fine. The attack of Ball Lightning (run behind it as it goes in) Short Circuit, then Thunder Strike does wonders to even con minions. I generally do not worry about endurance drain on my blaster as he takes things down quickly. When I do want to drain, using charge up with Thunderous Blast does well, then short circuit and power sink do a good job of killing what is left. I'm having fun with him. I primarily solo and go between a bunch of characters. With my defender on the other hand, EA/EB, I made that character after the changes and I have gotten that one to 50 (16 vet levels) primarily soloing and the occasional task force. No farming. You can absolutely drain EBs to nothing or essentially nothing. Remember, they may be able to do a minor attack, no big deal. The minor attacks aren't what defeat you, their massive attacks are. If you drain them down to nothing, they aren't dropping their nukes or similar. I soloed all the requirements of the portal jockey badge and drained each and every one of the EBs (only one I didn't get to no blue showing was the Clockwork king)

<shrug> I was doing Elite Bosses, and the two AVs from the AE mission (both were Mu and resistant to electricity) and was successful draining them as set forth above. I was also able to drain some GMs. You might want to give an ElA/EB Defender a try on the test server. The changes they made makes draining endurance a viable tactic. Use Power Mastery Epic Power Pool Build up with Thunderous blast followed up by Charge Up and Short Circuit.

With my Ill/TA I six slotted Acid Arrow (rest the same 5 procs) and put in an Acc/Dam from Positron's Blast, and since that was two from that set it gave me a 2.5% to recovery on top of some accuracy.

Appreciate it, but I haven't had any problems. One thing that probably helps me that I didn't mention is that I shove the Stealth IO from the Celerity set into sprint, the other player is also grabbing the initial aggro. Your right in that if you do not kill the enemies end, you can easily be in a world of hurt. That is one of the reasons I keep using Insulating Circuit to get free absorb points. When I solo, which is what I primarily do - I find it relaxing and it helps destress from my day- I generally throw in ball lightning, I follow it as it is going it, and then hit them with shock. At that point, I really only bother with the cage if there is something that might stun or hold me because the enemy doesn't have the endurance to be a threat. I have to say, I really love draining all the endurance from the main bosses in missions. They will continue to give you their programed phrases as you attack them. It is kinda like they are monologing as you beat them down.