ZemX

Yeah, I didn't realize it could do that either but looking at City of Data, I think I get it. HT is a little weird in that it's foe-targeted but then rezzes in a PBAoE around the caster. So the HT power itself just handles the enemy targeted debuffs. It spawns a pseuo-pet attached to the caster to do the rezzing. That pet is tagged as persisting through death, so you can die immediately after casting and the pet will still do its thing. Because that causes about a 1 to 1.5 second delay, it seems you can die and then be hit by the pet's "Howling" rez a second later. That rez only hits dead allies, but at that moment... that included you. 😀

If nothing else, this is worth running across a few oddities I never knew existed before. I commented about this one in General when it happened: Unlocking Kristof Jaeger in Nerva requires the Villain badge. The Villain badge is given for defeating 1000 Longbow. Surprisingly, when I looked, I had already done 901 Longbow somehow, so I had just 99 more to go. Having completed that, I went to Jaeger. First thing he wants me to do? "You need to prove yourself to me. Go defeat 20 Longbow!" ...

I give up. I can't get 6 across or 1 down.

I'm not sure if that's what's being asked. Admittedly, it's a bit contradictory to say "top tier" and "viability" in the same sentence. One means "the best of the best" and the other means "anything that's good enough to survive" essentially. I can believe you can build anything to survive content in this game, but you're going to have a lot of variation in how safely and/or how quickly they can do it. Plainly, some ATs/combos will be better than others. By a lot. If that's what's really being asked, then people need to take the usual "anything works" response down a notch, because while anything works, not everything works as well.

A contact has to have at least one story arc or I don't bother with them. I can get random filler from the scanner/paper if I want that. However if I do pick up a contact for a story arc, then I tend to finish their side filler too just to clear them off my list right away.

The challenge as originally stated really only disallowed conveniences like P2W or accepting any outside help whether from other players or your own alts. Otherwise, if you earned it on that character yourself, you could spend it yourself. I bought converters with merits at the merit vendor and sold them for quick cash to buy IOs I wanted. As far as AE goes... there is a prohibition on "power-leveling" but that's usually defined as having someone else higher level doing all the work while you just suck up a portion of the rewards and level fast. In that same spirit though, I would avoid any AE arcs that are specifically designed to farm tickets at some optimal rate... but that's just me. Nothing actually in these rules about it. As for the difference between this challenge and your non-challenge characters, it's kind of why I sort of gave this up at around level 21 with my Stalker. I had been comfortably set for SOs and even had money to buy some helpful procs. It didn't feel a whole lot different from normally leveling except for the lack of P2W. I was earning enough merits that it wasn't likely I'd have a problem slotting IO sets at around 30 as I typically do. The only other difference was being more cautious due to the permadeath thing. For the moment, I've decided to try @Snarky's all-redside-arcs thing to see how long I can stick with it. The character is otherwise unrestricted. So far I've done through First Ward and am working on Nerva contacts now. If I do another challenge character soon, it will probably be something more like the Rogue Legacy idea recently posted here. Similar to what you're doing here: No buying from AH. Merit Vendor okay but no buying anything with merits just to sell at auction. So no converters for cash or to make cheap IOs into more expensive ones for sale. Only to use myself or store in the base. The legacy part means on death, the character transfers enhancements to the base for the next iteration of the character to inherit, along with anything else. Add to that a forced difficulty bump of either +1 or x2 (player choice each time) at levels 15, 25, 35, and 45. I like the idea that it's not exactly permadeath but not "death is meaningless" either. You still have to start over but you theoretically start over each time wealthier and eventually are pretty well off for enhancements and such. But you put a lot of time in for that too.

Unless this is going to be a dedicated 50-only build, I would just slot the attuned set. It's not worth losing those set bonuses if you ever plan to exemplar below 47 just to have a really tiny extra chance of proc at level 50. Also remember that Agility and Spiritual alpha incarnate abilities affect proc chance as well. They count as recharge enhancement in the power and not global recharge bonus.

Yeah, that was a raid leader breaking their own rules. Not cool. If they opened up invites in LFG they should have honored that. They don't own the zone in any case. If they wanted more control over the invites, they should have done it instanced. Or at least gotten all their friends invited first before inviting the public.

This is where I'm at too most of the time. I find the endgame stale due to power creep. 50+4 teams are often just a rolling mass of explosions that eats everything in its path with overbearing visual and sound effects. Some people find that fun. It give me a headache. But so does the 1-20 game. Around level 25-30 things get better. IO sets are more worth slotting but not yet overpowering. If you exemplar to 30 you have access to every primary power and all but your T9 secondary. You have pools and maybe one power from an epic/patron if you took it at 35. But no Incarnates. It's just plain more interesting not to have all the highest level powers and soft-cap-finishing abilities that render the endgame so bland for me. I'll visit the endgame from time to time, but I live exemplared somewhere in the mid-levels whenever I can. The game for me is more about joining random pick-up teams and seeing what can make them tick. Each one can be different. Again, in the mid-levels where it maybe still matters what AT and powersets you have on the team. It's either that or trying to find interesting solo challenges to occupy me.

There are two sides to every story and in my experience there are both people who overreact to knockback AND knockback-users who accept precisely zero criticism, however constructive or politely phrased, that falls short of them using knockback whenever and however they want on a team. A team is ideally more than just eight people soloing near each other, each doing whatever they want with no regard for how it affects the rest of the team. It's a game and we should all be doing what we find fun, but if you join a team, consider that what you find fun could be affecting someone else's fun. That doesn't mean you have to stop. But it should mean you are willing to consider a compromise. If that's how you approach it already, then you're doing nothing wrong in my opinion.

No, here's the standard: "If you ran into one jerk today, you ran into a jerk. If everyone you ran into today was a jerk... you're the jerk." Sixteen or more people had no problem joining this league and one person was a jerk about it. That's all that happened. You are right though... it's best to not let them upset you. Because you're occasionally going to run into them no matter how well you think you're conducting yourself. And that's because you aren't the problem. They are. If you are the problem, as noted above... everyone will let you know about it.

I was just as surprised when I joined back in March to find that nobody on Everlasting had taken Annie Matter the name of an old Rad/Rad Corruptor I had on Virtue. It's such an obvious pun. I have several variants of this toon with different AT/powers and also scored Annie Proton and Annie Social for them. Weird.

Yeah, this fight changes a lot based on who you are (and thus who the clones are) and how much you've put into your build by that point. In my case, this Staff/Nin stalker was showered with enough inf from rich alts to have all attacks fully slotted with IO sets, including both ATO sets. I think the clones are not a copy of your build but just NPCs generated to use powers from the same powersets so they don't have these advantages. Between that and soft-capping with a couple purple insps, they didn't really stand much of a chance even against just me alone. I'm sure 8 blasters is no picnic in that level range. Imagine facing eight storm defenders or something like that? 🤪

Guarded Spin is pretty nice too as a 9ft, 90deg cone. It makes this a pretty balanced set for Stalkers with better AoE than most other Stalker sets and better ST than Staff Scrappers get. Shame about the stances, but you quickly forget about that once you have slotted the ATOs and Build Up is recharging so often (thanks to those AoEs) it's actually slowing down your attack chain. 🤪 Would kill for some No Redraw though definitely. And there's an animation bug with Assassin Strike if you use it from Hide without the weapon already drawn. But it's not a huge problem.

There are reasons, which means the rules are not arbitrary. That word does not mean "rules I don't agree with". Looked easy enough to me if there were sixteen plus people in the league vs. one entitled jackwad who couldn't read and didn't have the maturity to deal with not getting exactly what he wanted when he wanted it.

You should go Rogue for a bit and Ouro the Dean MacArthur / Leonard arcs. Then you can choose to face eight of your clones at once and earn the "Army of Me" badge. 😈 Course, you have inspirations and they don't which is what saved me. Couple purples and my Ninjitsu is soft-capped. They still tried burying me in a pile of Caltrops, though.

No Goldside? Slacker!

Confirmed by the way. If you choose to kill Harris, you can still complete Webber via Ouro without any trouble. Just did so.

Neat! These clone arcs are really some of the best in the game: And yes, there's one extra response you get when you first talk to Jenni Adair:

Awww, mannnnn. Now I feel bad! I'm going to go cry into my piles of money from the bank job, now!

Oops! Though this time I did FireWire. Is this also a problem if you have to Ouro Doc Webber?

Oooo... I JUST did Leonard's arc and am level 28. I may just have to take a short Vigilante Vacation for this. 😈 Speaking of clones... a spoiler question for Leonard's arc for those who have done it:

Okay you convinced me. I re-rolled Chrome Ninja and worked my way back up doing all arcs. You were not kidding about Sharkhead. The combination of that many arcs and the lowish level makes it a total slog. But I am back at level 28 after having done most of Sharkhead. I still need to finish Ross and then do Wade and Tarixus. Might do Buzzsaw but could also save for later. Nice thing about being a Stalker is blowing through missions in stealth mode (when they aren't defeat-alls or kidnappings anyway). I did stop over in Atlas to run four DFBs and that helped a lot, especially on the recovery buff. I was also a little more careful on my attacks. Took one fewer attack and slotted the rest better. Slowed me down a little but stayed within the endurance budget without having to add slots to Health/Stamina. Around 22ish, I started slotting sets. ATOs and attack sets at least. Decided not to bother with DiBs. I did mess up a little bit along the way. Didn't pay close enough attention to Dr. Graves. Saw he was 5-19 but didn't check that his three story arcs each had different level ranges. So I missed that entirely and will have to Ouro it. Also missed one of Billy Heck's arcs. But the shorter one. Other than that. I think I got everything so far. Including unlockables. Ghost Pirates weren't too bad. Just took a few nights in a row while doing other content to go hunt them around the fort. And some folks were hitting Scrapyarder on the regular over the weekend, so "Strikebuster" was no problem. Just finished Leonard again last night. Love that arc. "Army of Me" badge! And yes, I am trying to keep an eye on the level ranges and stop at the upper end of the set of arcs I need to finish. I missed Billy Heck's second arc because I turned on XP too soon thinking I could still finish his arc. Worked, but it locked me out of his second arc. So not doing that again.

In my case the problem is the gameplay at low levels just isn't fun for me. I have few powers, poorly slotted, and (usually) endurance issues. So I'll go in with the intent of stopping XP and playing all the arcs and then eventually just run out of patience after one too many kill-all slogs. And that's with all SOs, a few of the good end procs, amplifiers at level 1, P2W goodies. It just sort of becomes a chore to actually get through the missions in the mid-teens. Starts to get better around 20. Is fine by 30. I will likely have no problem completing all contacts from about level 30 on because the character has started to become fun enough to play it isn't detracting from enjoying the stories.

You have more patience than I do. I started out with the intent of doing something similar for at least the redside contacts but didn't even make it through Port Oakes without saying... "Okay, I am sick of being on NoXP. I will skip... that contact chain over there." Did the same in Sharkhead and Nerva. Skipped all of First Ward/Night Ward because I've done them all before. But if you need another Rogue for anything, shoot Chrome Ninja a tell (or @ZemX). Chrome is currently level 28 and a Staff/Ninjitsu Stalker on Excelsior.