ZemX

30-something sounds right to me too. I am not sure because I don't plan or farm for it. I just play. The threads and vet levels eventually result in 6xT4, but they VERY quickly result in 6xT3 and probably a T4 alpha within the first ten or so vet levels. Just don't see the urgency to push to T4 any faster than that.

I know the topic isn't ABOUT redside, but just so people are aware: The Dean MacArthur and Leonard arcs (Sharkhead) on redside are just about prequels to the Nance/Adair arcs on blueside. The latter even recognize that you've finished the Leonard arc with an extra dialogue choice talking to Adair regarding the main villain she's after. It's all the same 20-29 level range though so you might have to stop XP to see it all. It's by no means a huge link, so you're not missing anything Earth-shattering by not doing those redside arcs but... do it at least once if you haven't already. It's fun! You can play it as going undercover in the Rogue Isles (go Rogue at Null) to run the arcs and then return to blueside. Also... trying to spoil as little as possible, some hints for Leonard's arc:

What is detrimental to your toon is detrimental to the team. Especially for a support AT. Panacea does more for your team slotted in your Health than it does for anybody slotted in this power. Even in situations where this power is of any use to begin with, the proc rate is so slow the effect is barely noticeable.

It's popular because it's fast XP in the low levels but also because you get your pick of one of four buffs that remain with you until level 22. So run it four times and get all four. Then when you're 15, run DiB and get another four that last until 30. It's not going to compete with a farm for speed, but then again neither would you care about the buffs if you were door-sitting a farm. It's for people who want to play their characters in the low levels. In that case, the buffs are nice. Especially the accuracy and recovery ones.

You wish to claim his throne?

I think the bigger problem with it is simply the recharge time. Even if you got to the recharge cap, you're only going to lay this down once every 40s (and realistically it's 50s or worse for most people). On a good team even at +4/x8 that's probably still every other spawn at best or every third spawn at worst. So cut whatever this does do in half or a third. And that's a best case. AVs/GMs are maybe the only place it sticks around long enough to be useful, but how often is that? And the idea of proccing this is... questionable. Far as I can tell, the 40ft radius absolutely murders the proc chance. It's a 9% chance every 10 seconds. The heal is something like 71hp (if it follows Minion Pet modifier) or 90hp (if it follows Defender values). Either way it is less than 1hp/sec per person in the field on average. Panacea is by far more useful in the character's own Health inherent. This is my impression browsing that link from @roleki. I know Stalkers more than anything else, so I went browsing through and was astonished to see anywhere from 50 to 90% of Stalkers taking Placate depending on the powerset. Nearly any veteran Stalker these days would tell you it's the most skippable power we have. Not entirely without use but just... there are so many better choices. Placate hasn't really ever enhanced a Stalker's DPS vs. just continuing to scrap but Issue 22 buried any doubt of that with the addition of Quick AS. Still, it must be that many people still feel it is thematic or iconic enough that they should take it. Placate, having been made irrelevant for any DPS boosting use, is now just a single-target "don't hit me" control power on a 60 sec timer. Not useless, just not nearly as useful as almost anything else you could replace it with in a build.

Yeah, I think people can put down the torches and pitchforks. If they do revisit this, I have little doubt they will remove the exclusion from Infiltration since it is no longer primarily a stealth power. It is primarily a travel power with a stealth component, just like SS or any other power with a Stealth IO. Per ParagonWiki, here's how it used to work (emphasis mine): The only thing that needs to happen here is removing Infiltration from the exclusion group called "Stealth_Group". This is what makes these powers toggle each other off when they are activated. Since Invisibility's stealth strength was moved into Stealth and replaced by the lesser 36ft StealthRadius, it is functionally the same type of power now as Super Speed. i.e. Travel power with secondary stealth effect. It is not primarily a stealth power and should not exclude other primary stealth powers. Edit: Removed the entire paragraph about stacking Infiltration because I just noticed it also has the "highest value suppresses others" tag, which means it doesn't stack with the StealthRadius of SS. Quantum Flight however, does stack stealth.

No, if it's absolute easiest I would go with an SR Brute or Tanker probably. Just as able to stealth missions as a Stalker, it's just that their "stealth" involves not having to care about who sees them. 🤪 And they don't have to worry about Hide when dragging a hostage. They cannot climb stairs. Makes me want to claw my own eyes out sometimes watching them try to go up or down a flight of stairs. End up spinning in place or getting stuck on one of those railings... agggghhhh! I had one of them do that while a timer ticked down towards a police ambush if I didn't get the hostage out. Nope... spinning on the stairs. *checks watch* Okay... I'm leaving without you. Interesting about CT. But I rarely take that power.

Did they actually make this decision or did they just forget to remove the exclusion from Invisibility when they put Infiltration in its place? Because Invisibility used to be exclusive with other self-affecting stealth powers. I haven't read back through BOTH of the focused feedback threads (just some of them) to find out if this has been asked and answered before but yeah, it doesn't seem to make sense why this power is exclusive with stealth powers and SS is not.

One solution for those who hate it is to Hover while doing it. Less break-dance. More triple-axel.

Ugh.. good point. A fair number of them are that awful horse stance. But Elec Melee's AS is awesome too. As is Ninja Blade.

Yeah, I can't ever seem to justify taking it. If I really was willing to go without a real travel power... I might. It's nice that the speed doesn't suppress, even if the defense does. And of course nice that it takes a LotG, if you need more spots to put them.

Can't say I have. One of my favorite characters is a Ice/Shield stalker and emoting at all with a shield in hand is a pain. You have to do something like "/em idle1" first or most emotes won't even play. And then some get mixed up with others it seems. Unless I want to turn off all shield defense powers which... bad idea in the middle of combat. 🤪 Ah well. Sounds fun tho.

Played a Sonic Blast corruptor once.... once. Also Kinetic Melee. Although with Sonic, it's probably just the audio, which might be fixed with a mod maybe. Kinetic Melee also has awful sound effects. Now that I've heard it called "NASCAR Melee" I can't think of it any other way. But the animations are awful too. The one character I made with it was a mime. Because that's what it reminded me of. Other than that, I tend to just stay away from VFX heavy powersets. Never have, and probably never will play a Stormie. I don't care how good it is. And MMs. Can't play MMs. Visual spam fest. Ninjas and Thugs aren't too bad but I don't see them nearly as often as robots or demons or wolves. Would love a minimal option for Rad Armor. I can tone it down decently well with color choices but I still have spinning ping pong balls I'd love to lose. I can put up with it though.

Looking into it some more... It looks like the radius and arc buffs weren't done by editing the arc or radius in the power details. But by this line in Gauntlet: "+50% Radius, Arc Strength for 10s (self only) for 10s." So it's an enhancement. Powers like Foot Stomp, that aren't supposed to be affected, have an icon near "Activation Details" on the left that says "Strengths Disallowed" and includes "Radius" or "Arc" if they are not meant to be affected by the Gauntlet buff to those attributes. Played around in game a bit and it certainly seems like things like Sands of Mu are wider than I recall on other toons. Way easier to hit three targets in front of me without sidestepping and trying to line them up. Unless it's my imagination. The max targets hit cap increase WAS done just by editing all the powers affected. So while Sands might be wider (if it really is) it won't hit more targets like Tanker cone powers.

So Gauntlet's descriptions says it is an area taunt around targets you attack and also as something that widens the arc of cones, increases the radius of AoE attacks, and extends the length of chains. So yeah... I've heard of punch-voke and the AoE buffs from time to time but never dug into them. And my searching has not answered all my questions. Help a Tanker newbie out? Does anything punch-voke? Primary, secondary, and epic/pool/prestige attacks? Obviously only the tanker's primary/secondary attacks allow taunt enhancement. But shouldn't everything punch-voke? Except, I assume, Taunt itself? 🤪 On to AoEs... does every AoE not excluded in the patch notes get a radius or arc boost? Is Taunt, again, an exception or is it actually a 22.5ft AoE on Tankers instead of the normal 15ft?

There certainly are a lot of ambushes in Praetorian missions, but they are not unique in the whole "ignoring Hide" aspect. I find most ambushes anywhere work this way and the ones that are location-based instead seem to be more rare. It's certainly true of redside, since I've just been doing an all-redsider arcs character. Regardless, if the ambushes hit you while you're already fighting it's no worse on a Stalker than anybody else. If they hit you while you're between fights, you usually have time to choose where you will meet them. Pick a corner. Re-Hide. Pop the first one around that corner with a quick Hide crit. You won't likely have time for a Hidden AS, but that's not a huge deal either in this day and age of Quick in-combat AS. Yes, escorting hostages is a pain on a Stalker, usually, but that's also true anywhere, not just in Praetoria. The benefits of running a Stalker through story arcs more than outweighs that, IMO. You will often be able to skip a lot of pointless fighting. Especially pointless if you are stopping XP so that you can do all story arcs. Then again, you can do the same with Tanker/Brute "Stealth" (which involves a broad grin, a middle finger, and a general disregard for anybody trying to hurt you as you run past them with your hair on fire).

Power Loyalist is fun if you're headed to Villain and especially if you're gonna be a Rogue eventually. It's all about self-promotion.

Are you on Ultra graphics settings? Maybe try turning it off temporarily to see if that translucency effect goes away. I doubt they intentionally added translucency to the masks. It might be a result of the shaders that got added with Ultra and why you remember it looking different/better way back when. Just a guess.

Not agreeing to your framing of the issue isn't "beating around the bush" nor is it being dishonest. Yes, a name release policy can result in people coming back after a long absence to names that have been generic'd. That's already been stated. More than once I think. But it's also true that the policy gives people time to keep names they want to keep. That you don't consider any such time period reasonable is your opinion, not some fact. I don't agree with your opinion. I think its more than reasonable and have said so. I actually think the "two-year log in anywhere" idea was even more reasonable than the written policy which, while it does protect 50s indefinitely, seemingly also requires you to log into every other character in your roster on every server with increasing frequency the lower their levels are. But if you want any vindication, you're already gotten it. The mere fact the stated policy has never been implemented is the devs agreeing with you that this just isn't (yet) a big enough issue with the playerbase in general to give it priority over other things they could be doing. Might want to take that "W" and flash it around a bit instead of rehashing old arguments that won't go anywhere. Just a suggestion.

Even I wasn't sure if that was serious.

They don't. This isn't the goal of any name release policy. It's not about every person getting exactly the name they want. From the perspective of the people running an MMO, all they care about is that more names are available for active players. They aren't concerned which players or what names. One person not getting the name they want doesn't "perpetuate the issue" because that isn't the issue. Never was.

Well.. was the point. Can't believe none of us thought to scroll up and hit the F.A.Q button! It's right there! Embarrassing and hilarious at the same time. 🤪 But it makes both the two-year name release idea AND the name auction idea and the whole silly slap fight over it moot. This is the way name release will be implemented... if it ever is.

I'm evil... but I'm not a monster!