ZemX

Vampires are easy. Just go with a... *checks notes*... ah yes, Savage Melee Dark SS Mind Psy Necromancy Invuln Dark Armor Dark Miasma Dark Affinity TankerBruteStalkerControllerDomMM. Oh yeah.. with Sorcery pool... duh!

Sure seems like a bug. If you open the tailor on any costume and it's already showing a cost... that's a bug. It should only cost you to change something and if you've touched nothing yet, there should be no cost. If an option is removed, like No Redraw, and you had that selected, then it should have already been changed offline by the patch. It should not show up as a change in the costume creator. If you try to import a saved costume that has No Redraw selected, I'd expect to get that message "some options not available, do you want to try importing anyway?" If you do see a cost immediately upon entering the tailor screen, try going to the individual costume parts that show a cost and hit "revert" arrow next to it to see if the cost goes away. I've seen that before and it's worked for me. But it might not on a costume piece that no longer CAN be customized. Might have to file a ticket.

Not sure I've tried soloing it to be honest. I suppose it's possible it scales down the number of New Praetorians you face based on the team size but I can't think of any other mission that does that with named NPC enemies like that. On a full team, it's a heck of a challenge compared to its blue counterpart.

You're kidding, right? Mr. G's second mission has you fight five EBs/AVs from the New Praetorians at once while being ambushed by PPD after robbing the Brickstown bank. The similar mission from Provost Marchand gives you four B-List villain EBs (same losers you fight in Safeguard missions) you can fight one at a time with their associated goons while working your way through the bank, It's a total joke by comparison. I'll give you Calvin Scott is a problem for anyone who can't handle his mines but he's nothing close to fighting ALL the New Praetorians at once while being ambushed repeatedly.

None of the rank-and-file Arachnos I'm aware of do any -RES at all and I've never noticed any res debuffing myself. I most often play Rad Armor Tankers, so I'd notice. Arachnos does defense, endurance, recovery, and perception debuffing that I'm aware of. The AVs might do more, but ordinary adds? No. Serafina also does not debuff Resistance. The red con EB is a clue something is wrong there. Like I said, should have been yellow or orange at -1 notoriety. Unless this arc has some special exception for the level of the EB here. Are you entirely sure you didn't have AVs turned on and were actually trying to solo her as an AV? Not sure what else would explain it. Even as an AV, she'd have to be level 50 at least to be reaching numbers like 1400 damage for Psychic Wail.

Not overtuned. Broken. Nothing you said in your post should be possible for a mid-upper-30s EB (or even a level 50 EB) at -1 notoriety vs. your at-least 26% psi res. There is absolutely no way short of a bug she can be hitting you for 1400.

At first I was confused by this because Rad's T2 and KM's T3 are almost identical in cast, recharge, and damage dealt. Then I noticed this total weirdness about Smashing Blow: The "Animation Time Before Effect" is actually slightly LONGER than the animation time of the power. Not longer than the ArcanaTime, that is, but ArcanaTime just governs when the next attack can begin. The actual animation you SEE ends after 1.2 seconds. Then the attack effects are applied which is when the target actually takes the damage. I looked around at a few different sets looking for a power that did the same sort of thing and didn't find any. They might exist, but this seems particularly weird. Several other KM attacks have similarly late effect landing times compared to the animation window but none actually land AFTER the animation like this one.

Now I'm imagining an entire team of mimes just waving their hands at the enemy. Dual Finger Pistols. Invisible Wall Armor.

Yeah, not saying it was the same situation but point is: that thinking exists that a Tanker on a team should just be a wall. Might be they had attacks for soloing or farming but believed on a team their role should be all defensive. I dunno. Could even be an attitude that comes from more rigorously Tank/Heal/DPS games than this one. Funny part is, a Tanker taunts whatever they hit so laying about you with all your attacks on TOP of taunting and taunt aura is the best way to get and keep aggro for a team. If you have a big epic AoE for example, that sucker is a ranged AoE taunt on a Tanker. There are Tankers who even don't take Taunt (the power) because of all those other ways to taunt. I am not one of them, but it's a way... and it certainly makes a lot more sense than just standing around tossing out that one Taunt power.

Ordinarily, I am suspicious that at least some of the train wreck stuff that happens on streams like this is somewhat staged but the bit about the tank, I have actually seen. Once ran into an Ice/Ice Tanker that called himself a "pure" tank because the only attack he took, because he was forced to, he didn't use. Dude would just hover in the middle of a fight with all his toggles on, occasionally throwing out a taunt but often enough just... being. It looked quite relaxing. The other part I believe is that many farms are specifically designed to avoid "troublesome" debuffs like defense and endurance, so farm builds don't even need to worry about them. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if those tankers were being detoggled by endurance loss vs. Freaks in some of those missions.

The best thing about PuGs is the worst thing about PuGs.

"Kraken here $loc" works without the copy/paste step needed. As for the rest, yeah, someone always starts in eventually. If someone is very loud about forming a team and telling people to message them for a spot on it, you might have a bit more order, but the longer that goes on, the greater the chance someone won't be able to keep a cork in it. Or someone will just accidentally aggro the Kraken because they aren't careful arriving in the area. And once Kraken tags someone, it's on...

I can honestly say that's never happened to me. Not the "constantly" part at least. Also, one couldn't just float in front of my character. I am in 3P camera so they'd have to be some distance behind me and always moving with me. It just never happens more than coincidentally and in a blue cave or Oranbega map having camera obscured is a constant and random occurrence throughout the map. Not just with players but with geometry and with enemies. That's to say nothing of all the particle effects from everything. I deal with it by moving. Sometimes in an absolutely choked Oranbega hallway I will just TP my tanker into the middle of a pack blind and just start rattling off attacks on whatever target is nearest in front of me. Often I can't even see them. Ultimately, if someone in the team is somehow annoying me with something they are doing, I am more likely to move on politely after a mission than bother attempting to get them to do things more to my liking. I wouldn't want someone else thinking they know better how I should play so I don't "do unto others" in that respect either. Even when I'm right. 😈

You perhaps haven't read the whole thread. They've already said they could have turned off particle effects but believe they shouldn't have to because somehow it's "selfish" when other people don't agree to accommodate their needs. The purpose of this thread is presumably to poll the rest of us about whether we think that's reasonable or not. And I don't. If I'm the only one having a problem and I have a way to resolve it that affects nobody but me... yes, I should do that. It is clearly the best solution for everybody. Demanding someone else change their gameplay to accommodate me when I clearly have another solution would be selfish on MY part. But it's also just a good idea to have a VFX macro handy. This is hardly the only situation where VFX can be overwhelming. It is a common occurrence. Having a macro or two to deal with it is good sense. Like turning off screen shake in the bowl at an MSR. The tools are there. Use em. You will find more than a few scenarios where they come in handy.

*turns off the police scanner* "Okay gang, we gotta rescue this next hostage from a gunpowder factory!"

Agree with @Sovera though I'd lean towards Rad/Rad rather than Spines. It will be more visually "plaguey" (if I can use that word) with Rad Armor's glowy/smoky aura layered on top with Rad Melee's Irradiated Ground patches being dropped every 5 seconds and your AoEs spreading "Contamination" effects as well. Normally, I think Rad Armor's VFX are kind of over the top and try to minimize their visibility with color choices, but in your case you'll want to showcase them. You might find Dark Radiation color customizations more suggestive of your plague concept. Best would be to spin up a 50 on test server and play with it to see what it looks like with all its powers turned on.

Counterpoint: Sky Splitter does both the knock up and slam down and then Innocuous Strikes stabs them repeatedly in the nethers while they are on the ground. Just sayin'

It kind of sounds like you're describing ArcanaTime, except the longest pause that would be added to a power's animation time in this case is 0.132 seconds, which isn't the sort of delay I'd really call a stop in the action. I would think the only time you could notice such a delay is if there's a mismatch between the cast time and the actual animation time. i.e. If the animation time is noticeably shorter than the cast time then you'd notice your character pause because the game will still wait the full ArcanaTime of the power before allowing the next power to begin. But I don't have an example. Unless you're just talking about animations that seem to flow together better because one picks up close to where the other left off. Like a left-then-right punch combo instead of two left-handed attacks (looking at YOU Dark Melee).

It does not break Hide but it isn't special either. It's no advantage to the Stalker at all since SC and LR do not crit either. As a Stalker you are better off walking, leaping, or teleporting to the center of the pack first and then using you best normal AoE attack from your primary or epic pool to gain the 100% (50% for AoE) crit chance from Hide. THEN use SC or LR. Same damage. Zero risk of Hide being spoiled by a counter-attack.

They have not enabled it. Warnings only. Whole thing is on indefinite hold due to a few issues still to iron out, last I heard.

It is even odder to me that you thought I was being even... remotely... serious.

I just snagged "Cool Ninja" on Everlasting for an Elec/Ice Stalker. Could go Ice/Ice if I end up not liking it. This was after trying "Storm Ninja", which was taken. "Storm Assassin" was available, if anyone wants something similar.

It is absolutely remote. The entire point is to EXPLODE it remotely so you can do this...

Doesn't have to. The goal of ANY kind of balance is that players will look at their available choices and see them ALL as equally worthy of being chosen. To use your word then, they didn't make Council miserable enough if people are still preferring to run exclusively Council radios. Sounds bad when I put it that way but the goal is actually FOR players. If you have five choices but nobody hardly ever picks four of them, then you don't really have much choice. The problem still seems to be that people just mindlessly process Council. It only takes a little longer. They take the same "Tactics" to Arachnos or Carnie and get wiped out, then decide never to choose them because they haven't learned that just throwing yourself at every enemy and rolling your face around on the keyboard is maybe not the best way to do things.

Incarnate powers are obtainable once you hit level 50. You then begin gaining Incarnate XP instead of regular leveling XP. This iXP goes to unlocking Incarnate power slots, each of which has a small tree of powers in it. Typically there are two main branches in each tree, Core and Radial. These are different versions of the same power. Slightly different effects. And then there are four ranks or "tiers" from T1 to T4. Your goal would be to aim for either the Core or Radial T4 in each Incarnate power slot, eventually. Caveat: Debuff effects can be unresistible. The only one I can think of for Slow right now is Tsoo Ink Men. Their Siphon Speed doesn't care if you have 100% slow resistance. There could be others. You do still want slow resist, most especially if you are not defense based (as you get hit by most/all debuffs)...just pointing that out.