cohRock

Twice now I have had new level 50 characters have to wait close to a week to earn a Notice of the Well. The character might have run a WTF on Monday and achieve level 50 on Tuesday. This means he has to wait 6 days to earn a Notice of the Well for his third-tier alpha slot. The current flag only tracks if you have done a WTF during the current week. If you have, you won't be able to earn a Notice component, even if you didn't get one the first time. Heh, I know the "do it with threads" contingent is already shouting that shards and notices are useless. I'm not going to say you're wrong, but I will say, I disagree. Save the threads for the five other incarnate types.

I'm another who likes this change. Although I do like it generally, I didn't see anyone mention the main thing I like -- its affect on the day job badge, Patroller (Criminal for villains and rogues). Previously, depending on play-style and frequency of play of a given character, this could take a very long time to earn, because it depended on both gaining and using patrol xp. I.e., being logged out was insufficient; the character had to actually use up the patrol xp to gain credit for the badge. Being logged out for a long period of time simply advanced the counter to a limit, and you had to log in and use up some to gain any more. Let Her RRP Why does this matter? The day job power Rapid Response Portal (RRP) depends on it. One can easily earn its inferior version, Monitor Duty Teleporter. (MDT). To get charges for either, one first has to earn the day job badge, Monitor Duty by being logged out near a permanent base portal for 100 hours. After that, logging out near a portal earns charges for MDT. However, if you also have the Patroller/Criminal badge, you also earn charges for RRP. (Yes, you can earn charges for both powers simultaneously, but only by obtaining the patrol xp badge first. This is now much easier, and a character need not stand near the portal 8 days twice to fully charge both powers. This would frequently happen to me because of the long time it took to get Patroller or Criminal. IMO the RRP is an undervalued power. While MDT lets your character go to a base, RRP is like the Ouroboros Portal. It drops a base portal anywhere which anyone can use. Its degree of usefulness approaches the Team Teleporter (TT). It even exceeds it in the cases where a team task is to go to another zone to hunt, but with no door mission for the TT to lock onto.

I really like the latest release, but I suspect something that nobody else I talk to seems to be sensing. It feels like the incarnate thread drop rate has lowered. It is still more than that incarnate shard drop rate, but it's not like 5x that rate any more. (5x made sense; it takes 5x more shards to make a common alpha component than any of the others.) With no one else feeling it, I'm probably just misremembering.

I have a level 50 fire/fire tank with his Hybrid power (Support Radial Embodiment) at tier 4. One of its capabilities is "10.64% strength to healing on target". Fine, except I cannot see that it does anything. It does improve damage, accuracy, and defense as documented, with the heal, though, no change is obvious. It does not improve Max Hit Points or Regeneration. However, it does show up in "Healing Bonus". Yet neither my own Healing Flames, nor the healing from my Immune Surgeon Essence (Lore Pet, Cimeoran Total Radial Improved Ally). I assume the healing bonus does something, but what?

I see this change as a very good thing, tying into my day job compulsion. Even outside of that, patrol xp can be thought of as delayed xp, raising the amount of XP you get from defeating foes and mission completions. Secondly, there are two quite useful day jobs that my guys strive to get, Monitor Duty Teleporter (MDT) and Rapid Response Portal (RRP). The former simply allows yourself the opportunity to go to your base or any other accessible base. It is straightforward to get, simply stand near a base portal before logging out. After 100 hours of logged out time (likely in multiple segments), you gain it. The second involves the tie to patrol xp. When you have that hundred hours of Monitor Duty (logged out near base portal) AND gain the Crimimal (villain/rogue) or Patroller (hero/vigilante) badge by using up 100 segments of patrol XP, your capability improves by being able to build RRP charges -- also by standing near a base portal while logged out. This allows you to drop a base portal anywhere, which anyone can use. During countless TFs, I see people drop an Ouro portal between missions (eg, help everyone to move from Kings Row to a hunt in Crey's Folly). That's very inefficient. By the time I get my base portal dropped for almost direct access to CF, almost everyone has saundered off via Ouro or the train, not being used to the idea of someone dropping a base portal anywhere. One gains the RRP badge via patrol XP, and gaining patrol XP was tricky before, because it involved being both logged out and logged in. time Now with exploration badges earning patrol XP, you can gain RRP with mostly logged-in hours. No more playing another character simply to get some logged out time on your guy. By the way, some time in the past 2 years, a quality of life change was made to earning RRP charges. If your guy built up 30 charges of MDT (6 days total logged out near base portal) without having the Criminal/Patroller badge, you would need to ANOTHER 6 days to build up 30 RRP charges. That was adjusted so if you already have MDT charges and log out near a base portal for an hour or so, the RRP charges build up quickly to match how many MDT charges you had -- so in only an hour or so you might get a fully charged RRP.

I'll just add that Flashback missions (usually started in Ouroborus) are collaborative by nature. Even though your team may be running Flux' arc, it will be doing so in a TF envelope, and everyone on the team gets mission holder rewards.

I wouldn't refer to a sentinel as "medium ranged". He is a fully ranged combatant, even more so than blasters, who have melee attacks in their secondary. The range for most blaster attacks is 80 feet, while for a sentinel it is still 70. (Most melee attacks are 7 feet.) In exchange for having armor, sentinels lose a little range, a little damage, and fewer total attacks. It is a fair trade-off, IMO. Note that, like blasters, sentinel secondaries include stamina and/or recovery capabilities, making sustained performance much easier than most other archetypes.

Thanks @FupDup. That makes sense. The combo should be pretty awesome then. I may still end up taking Super Jump as well, but I'll try these two on their own (plus Combat Jumping) first.

I just rolled an ice/bio sentinel. He will of course be taking Athletic Regulation. He'll also be taking Stealth from the Concealment Pool. I'm curious if that pool's Infiltration speeds will stack with those of Athletic Regulation? Infiltration doesn't like to stack with skills such as Super Jump, so I'm not really hopeful. OTOH, these are both "speed encouragers", not true travel powers, so they might work together.

It's a gift. 🐶

I do Ouro missions sometimes. There is a problem with doing longer arcs. The flashback mechanism is structured as a task force, which means once the arc has started, you can no longer add people, which you could have done if you had done the "real" arc earlier. This makes it awkward to do with random pick-up group unless you luck out and everyone who starts can stay through the end. I'm not sure, but if everyone in your team gets the arc reward merits, that might offset the not-invite issue. In normal missions, only mission holder gets the arc merits.

Start in Bloody Bay as Rogue see someone recruiting for Respec Trial that begins in IP send tell saying you'd like to join recruiter says i need to be blueside before they can add me leave Bloody Bay because Ouro Portal not active there. launch Ouroboros Portal right out of the helicptor try to click portal over and over. 😦 decide you can't click portal -- you always get the helicopter menu no matter where you stand 🙄 super jump across Cap Au Diable to get to base portal enter base and go to IP finally get yourself added to team 🙂

Thanks for feedback, everyone. It didn't occur to me that multi-target attacks would have a LOWER chance of proccing than singe-target attacks. Guess I'll respec soon, drop Gust, replace it with Cloudburst, and put the defender set in there.

I have a general question, but it is driven by a specific proc: Vigilant Assault: Recharge / Chance for PBAoE +Absorb. Its info says it can go off about 4 times per second. I have it slotted in my defender's storm blast secondary power, Chain Lightning. I can easily use it multiple times a minute, but when I watch for it to go off, I might only see its effect every 2 minutes or so. Do I misunderstand the frequency with which it should go off, is Chain Lighting a bad power in which to slot it, or could I be missing many instances of it firing? (I am monitoring Absorption Points as shown in Combat Attributes.)

I think I just did it all. The update to Vidiotmaps was very quick and occurred with nothing unexpected happening. Thank you.