KelvinKole

People always impress me with their creativity. This game provides such a great vehicle for it. Great entries so far!

I found something to do.

We’ll see how this goes. You all have screenshots, right? Technology can’t be trusted. Games were better played in the days of sand and sticks. In the spirit of resenting technology for all that it ruins when it doesn’t work, post your favorite costume that DOES NOT FEATURE ANY TECHNOLOGY THEMED COSTUME PIECES. Pretty vague, right? So will be the reward. I’ll send the winner some money, at least 20mil influence. This contest will only be open for as long as the technology isn’t working.

I’ve been so productive today. It’s really terrible. Please make it stop.

I think they should just rename Super strength as Rage Melee. Leave everything else alone. Then create a new set called Super Strength, with all the same attacks but with properly balanced base damage and a traditional build up.

I think there’s a difference. Super strength is a widely undertuned set, made up for by Rage. Most other sets can skip this build up power all together and still function at a respectable level….SS without Rage would be terrible. By virtue of that, people who want to play the set for theme, style, fun, etc. have to take Rage and thereby have to deal with the crash, which is joy kill and neuters certain armor sets more than others. Mathematically, I’ll agree that SS is balanced fine. I’ve always maintained the problem is around the absolute reliance on a single power and the associated joy kill that comes with it. That’s why I thought the proposal to have only double stacked rage come with a crash was a great one. People who want to play the set for fun can, without double stacking it and having to deal with the crash.

I only have three at 50, but it’s my dark/martial. He’s not the highest dps of my blasters, but has an it factor that I don’t get bored of. Right mix of damage, control, debuff, mobility, sustain etc. to handle just about anything.

I remember teaming with Toiletbreaker (hard to forget that name) and thinking….this is odd. The structure and flow of the team felt very tyrannical to me. It wasn’t for me but I don’t think I blocked your or anything. Knowing more about the person now, it starts to become less odd. I wish you luck on your journey to health and happiness. Life isn’t too unlike an RPG game. It’s less fantastical, but you are faced with just as many choices and do have the freedom to build yourself any way you please. Pick your skills, train them, invest time in yourself, and then refine and polish to become the best version of yourself. Most importantly though, just have fun.

1,560,000,000

I really thought we were almost there when they were talking about only double stacked rage having a crash. I bought a new microwave and it has a setting for popcorn. Gonna go test it out.

Assault rifle has to be mentioned here. It is the OG of conical justice. vorpal judgment is also a cone, and a darn good one.

Of course, the best way to play is the way you have the most fun. You will have some stealth with super speed and the celerity IO, but I’m not a stealth guru and can’t say if it’s enough to let you position yourself in the mobs without them noticing. The trouble with picking up the Stealth or Teleportation pool will be deciding which pool to drop. Leaping offers a lot, fighting and leadership are important for defense, so that leaves speed. Personally, I’d rather have hasten and ss than stealth or teleport…this is up to your preference. You won’t always be in control of the fight though, and stealth does little for you once the mobs know you’re there. I always try to build with a realistic budget because I have too many alts and I don’t farm. I do play some auction house games to make money. You could spend more money here with some Hami O’s in Umbral and Tentacles, or another purple set in Moonbeam. I’m not sure the ROI would be worth it though.

There's a lot going on in this build that might be contributing to your dissatisfaction. These are largely my opinions, but I offer them for you to review and judge. The build is very defensive with capped S/L/F/C defense. That appears to have been the focus and other areas may be suffering for it. I like defensive blasters, but you're core strength is in dropping things before they drop you and we need to excel at that. Umbral Torrent is a bread and butter power and has very strange slotting, abyssal gaze is a fantastic Proc power but only slotted for Holds here, Life Drain has no heal enhancement, there's some odd sprinkling of resistance IOs that we don't need, seemingly no knockback or hold protection, Telekinetic Thrust is skipped. Let's fix a few things. Turn Umbral Torrent into an attack and profit. This is going to be your opener. For me, Tentacles operates better as a proc attack. The immobilize is useful, but the DOT is too slow for me to care about it, so I slot three procs to get some damage upfront. Turn Abyssal Gaze into the proc bomb it was destined to be. This is your best single target DPA. Get Telekinetic Thrust and love it. Your second best single target DPA and gets things out of your face. Pick up Acrobatics for the knockback and hold protection. You'll be in some tricky situations when you go point blank and don't want to get stuck there. Put some healing in Life Drain. It might mean you outlive the other guy. You still get capped (okay, it's 44.9) S/L defense, which means you have capped defense to 90% of melee attacks in the game since they nearly all have a S/L component to them. Ranged defense is a little lower than I would like, at a respectable 34%, but your -tohit will help. Probably most importantly, you don't need Agility Alpha and can switch to Musculature which boots your damage, tohit debuffs, immob duration, and endmod. We profit from all of that. I would play this like this: Open with Umbral Torrent to put things on their backs -> jump in for Drain Psyche while things are on the ground -> PBAoE nukes. At this point, you've got layered defense from the capped S/L Defense and all the +regen from DP. You can scrap it out with the remaining hard targets, or jump back to blast your cones on the rest of the group. I think you'll see a lot more damage of this build which will improve your survivability, without sacrificing the things that actually keep you alive.

Want to share what you’re running and maybe we can help you tweak and edit it? What’s underwhelming you? Damage, survivability, something else?

I buy attuned enhancements from the auction house for everything except purples. If you don’t know, the auction house doesn’t differentiate between regular and attuned enhancement stock. So if you bid on an attuned enhancement and there’s only “regular” enhancements listed it will automatically attune it for you and sell it to you.

I think my Dark/dark brute on live was my favorite. It was pre IO and incarnates and had a very complete toolkit. A self heal in the attack chain, endurance sustain, the enormous dark regen heal, some cc, and stacking fury and soul drain for damage. Even a self Rez, which i preferred over the T9 armor crash in the days where you could actually die. Still a great and fun combo, but not the God he was then with the vast viability of everything these days.

I like the AE idea a lot. I always feel so overwhelmed trying to find an arc to play. Some curated choices would be a great way to encourage utilization, for both makers and players.

Sorry for your negative experience. I can offer one potential explanation. a lot of people who join radio teams have pre-determined notions of how it should be run, even if they never lead teams themselves. I find a lot of people want a particular difficulty setting, completion speed, mission cadence, mission type (not rescues), and even preferred villain groups (I sometimes have people quit because I choose arachnos missions). If you’re not meeting those unspoken demands, they may just leave. Not everyone though. Maybe try joining a supergroup where you can play with like minded people.

The game is 17 years old and shouldn't even exist anymore. I don't think we need to be as concerned with breaking it as we do with maintaining accessibility to the content. I hear the point about doing things solely for the enjoyment of it but I think the playerbase is largely casual these days; I know I am. The quickest way to get into the game and play, when you have 60min or less per day, is usually just to join a PUG running radios. The WST gives you a good chance to find a team doing that instead. Without it, you could spend 30 minutes just recruiting for the thing you want to do. Expanding that to other areas means I could log on to find multiple teams running missions in Kings Row (for merits), or teams running a story arc in Ouroboros (for merits), etc. I think it brings people together.

Eh, that’s not really what it’s about. I care a lot less about the merits as I do about the reason to go and do something or the focus it provides to a relatively small player population to have a common objective for a week (other than AE).

I like the WST concept a lot. It gives me an incentive to visit some content I might otherwise pass on, or revisit content that I’ve out leveled. It also brings together people of varying levels. Although I dislike “speed runs”, I accept it is sometimes inevitable and for the best. Can we expand the concept of offering an incentive on specific content? Weekly Strike Zone: Radio missions in this zone offer 1 merit per, to a maximum of 10. Since my radio doesn’t work in skyway city at level 50, I can join someone who does or switch to a character in level range. Weekly Monster Target: Taking down this GM awards double merits. Can be completed once. Weekly Story Arc: Completing this story arc, either through traditional means or through Ouroboros, awards double merits. Can be completed once. Weekly AV Target: Taking down this AV awards 10 merits. Can be completed once. What other weekly objectives could be given?

I agree, but people seem to want to look only at the primaries here and in that kind of analysis you’re going to use flares.

Flares is the better DPA attack, over fire blast. Since you probably can’t rotate only blaze, blazing bolt, and fireball…flares is needed and is the next best attack to use. Everyone can agree that, in a vacuum where you are only standing at 80ft and only using attacks from your primary, fire has the better (best) ST dps. There’s a legitimate point to be made about access to secondary powers though, and whether you’ll actually play the game in that aforementioned vacuum. If someone wants to play a blapper, elec is a fine choice and that character can put out similar dps to the fire blaster standing 80ft away.

I have a dark/martial that’s super fun. I think you could bend it to fit your theme. Kai push is one of the coolest powers in the game and could be perceived as a some kind of dark force. The kicks are generic and decent and I assume vampires can be well trained hand to hand combatants. Since vampires can also be fast, the real winner is burst of speed. Hit your cones from range, and then port in with BoS for black star. Reaction time is great and again you’re just faster than everyone else. Inner Will is great also and since you have superior mental and physical conditioning you can break out of control effects easily.