ZemX

I assume the OP has been away for a while and just noticed the patch notes about the various updates to the way powers root you during their animations (or don't root you) and likes what they see? Not sure what 11/10 is... score of 11 out of 10? Would post again?

I don't think there's one answer to that. Me, for instance... I can't ever see myself farming. I don't get it. I strangely somehow like to watch my characters develop as I play them. Maybe... I just haven't been playing again as long as some of you, having only just discovered HC this past March. On the other hand, I sort of think when I get tired of leveling characters up from 0, I will probably be tired of the game and set it aside. Why I mention that... I wouldn't want to be given hundreds of millions of inf. I'm already sitting on probably 400 million or so across my four 50s and have spent at least that much or more on their builds and those of various mid level characters already. I have no idea what kind of inf you end up with after being PLed to 50 in a farm, but I've found earning enough to self-fund a character the way I play is pretty easy even doing just the fairly lazy merits -> converters -> cash route and maybe occasionally crafting and selling in-demand IOs that I've been dropped or that I converted. But I don't spend a whole lot of time at that. Not like the real marketeers out there earning tens or hundreds of mil a day. But it's more than enough. My main 50 is accumulating wealth faster than I have been using it lately and that's just playing the game. Just piling up merits now and not using them even. My opinion? I wouldn't drop more than a couple million on someone at a time. Nobody needs anything to get started but it's a small enough amount (relatively speaking) that I don't think it would affect anyone's enjoyment at earning their own. I've done that, for example, for some alts where I just drop 1 or 2 million on them and it's plenty to comfortably jump start them into earning their own way. They can buy some conveniences in P2W in the tutorial at level 1 and their first couple rounds of SOs, by which point they've begun earning merits and making their own money. If I was sitting on THAT many billions, and knowing I wouldn't ever want to hand out more than a million or two at a time... hell, I'd probably just burn most of it. I mean you could just delete half of it and you wouldn't even notice it was gone. You're not using it.

To be fair, I can LRTP to Pocket D, hit up Gull, and then Ouro back in probably less than a minute, so it's not quite so outrageous a suggestion really. I'm not sure if anyone would have objected to trying Talos either. It seemed like a pretty easy going group. Now that I'm aware it's a sticking point, I might even bring it up with teams I join if I know there's a transit mission coming up.

I thought about asking the team to step out of Ouro and go to a real tram station but... again, it was late. I might have tried that line earlier in the day. It's funny how lazy stuff like the Ouro portal has made us. I've seen people port to Ouro when running to a tram would have taken less than 30 seconds. And it's unusual for it to take much longer. One can also go to Ouro and back to Talos and be dropped right next to the tram station.

That's the thing. Everyone has a line. I don't see a team lead kicking one stealther as a problem. If it was advertised no-speed, and that person got reminded it was no-speed and they STILL won't listen? Boot. It's not hurting anyone. They're already fighting without that jerk anyway.

I'm being a little facetious here. If it had been earlier in the evening and I was really enjoying the team, and they were actually willing to wait for me to switch, I might have done it. And yeah, I'd have gone Vig certainly. Speaking of Gull, I need to switch another vig to rogue just to see that great line about, and I can't remember it exactly, but it's something like "Congrats! You're a Rogue now. The devs don't hate you anymore. They just ignore you." ETA: Or was that said only when going Villain to Rogue? Hmmm...

Eh... if someone wants to post such an obviously self-aggrandizing comment as that, let them. It says more about them than anybody else.

If they want to tell me it's literally never sunny (or at least partly cloudy) there like there's literally never a clear patch of blue sky in the Rogue Isles, that word would be a lie.

Thing is, anything that is repeatable and has a decent pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is going to be something most people want to do quickly. So that's most TFs and Trials. The exceptions are when people tell you it's a "casual" or "kill most" or "kill through" which all basically mean "we're not speeding". But that still may involve a high powered steamroller team depending on what mix you end up with. Radio missions teams are usually this way. They aren't there for the end of mission rewards. The defeats along the way are the whole point. You might find mid-level radio teams tolerable. "Casual" specifically (usually) means the lead isn't concerned about speed OR high-difficulty, so people interested in that stuff stay away.. mostly. Beyond that, it sounds like your best fit is a contact mission team. This is someone doing story arc content from someone on their contact list. It can be somewhat varied. It might take you to different zones. But people doing them are usually not in a hurry to complete. And you might try striking up some banter while on such missions to see who bites. It can be a fun side thing. The game, let's be honest, doesn't provide a great deal of story to engage with. But here's the bad news... this is about the least common type of mission team I've seen advertised. If you want this sort of thing, you may have to be willing to lead it. Send out a request for team to do "contact missions". Maybe give the contact name, zone, and level/settings you're running at. That's always good info to have. But be prepared to not always fill that team quickly. Best do it blueside for the larger population, sad to say. Lastly, RP teams on Everlasting seem to be very casual in terms of the gameplay and difficulty. You don't see them that often in public LFG channels so if you're interested in that I'd go investigate RP forums and talk to people. There's probably channels to join for more of that, though you'll want to be sure just what kind of RP you're getting into. There's... different kinds. I ended up on a casual RP team last night on Everlasting that wasn't advertised as such and it was a lot of fun. Just someone doing mission arcs in First Ward who advertised they were doing so if anyone else wanted to come along. It must attract the sort of person who enjoys a bit of in-character banter while doing missions because we all ended up doing that.

It's interesting. It actually ends up with a somewhat larger area and one could argue it's easier to hit a spread of enemies without having to stand off as far. But it also looks like compared to the other AT versions it's been nerfed a bit in scale damage to bring it in line with the other Sent 90s nukes. And whereas the radial nukes in other sets have an inner radius where everything is hit for extra damage, Full Auto gets its extra damage as a 16% chance effect on any enemy in the cone. I get where they came up with that number. The inner radius of the other nukes represents 16% of the outer radius area, but a Sent with a radial nuke and a packed spawn in simply going to do more damage now than an AR sent with Full Auto. It's only equivalent when the spawn is evenly distributed over the whole 25ft radius. Just add it to the list of somewhat baffling decisions that went into the current version of Sents, I guess.

You know I was just thinking that it had been a while since my Rogue had any trouble on a blue team. Why I'd even gone to Ouro on several occasions without being summarily booted from the team I was on. But Karma was listening and a few days ago I was in a decent team, I forget what we were doing exactly but the next mission was a "Board Transit" and the team lead decided to go to Ouro for it. I don't know if that's what caused the problem but for some reason she couldn't set the mission. We'd been running in blue zones just fine up till then. She finally asked if anyone was redside and I fessed up. "Can you switch to blue?" I did the only (dis)honorable thing: Thanked the team for the missions and left. It was late anyway, but I still wouldn't have considered side switching just for that. For badges maybe... but not for one team. I have standards! 😈

Yeah, the permadeath thing might not be the best idea considering the level of time and effort investment you have to put in. Other challenges where you're allowed to level more quickly or have more perks it makes more sense. Maybe come up with another "Death" penalty? I would think resetting the mission at the very least. You got sent to the hospital. You can't just rush back in and pick up where you left off. If that's not enough, perhaps log the character off in a hospital for a few hours or a day for "recovery time".

This. I'm not saying overcast is always bad. I'm saying it's bad when it's.... always.

Worst I usually run across is someone wanting to run Posi 1 at +anything. +2/3 CoT bosses with force fields and friends that debuff your toHit will make you cry. They are bad enough at +0/1 at level 15.

I'm not sure when/if I'll finish leveling the Ice/Rad Stalker since I've brought the Ice/Shield over from Everlasting now and given her an SO alt build. But maybe I will off and on just to see how the run from 35 to 50 is on SOs. I still think the Ice/Rad is probably going to end up more fun to play on SOs just because of the added healing and recovery. And because Shield is a whole lot less impressive when you can't reach the soft-cap for defense.

This goes along with the usual mistake people make of thinking what they see on the forums is representative of the playerbase as a whole. It's not. As far the +4/x8 thing goes, it's common exactly where you'd expect it to be common: If you join a kill-most ITF or a PI radio team, it's usually 50+4/x8. The occasional Dark Astoria team seems to be there as well since it's now an Incarnate zone and lots of people running around there are already at +3 level shift. TinPex, iTrials, etc. Regular mission teams and lower level TFs/radios/tips seem to adjust based on how the team is doing and team leads will often solicit "how we doing?" opinions on bumping the diff up or down. You can certainly run into thick-headed team leads who insist it's +4/x8 or bust... even when people are dropping like flies... but the thing to do there is leave them to it.

It really hasn't been an issue. Rad Infection is 0.52 per second unenhanced and for that you're hitting them with -31.25% tohit and defense. You have less need of it for the tohit part thanks to the debuffs in your Dark attacks, but it would make your attacks hit more often, which might be worth it. And coupled with Dark attacks, you might feel like you're soft-capped. It feels that way already when I take one small purple with Rad Infection running, even on a +1 LT. It almost is against an even minion: -31.25% tohit and 12.5% defense. And that's unenhanced. Not that I'm holding my breath for a ToHit Debuff enhancer to drop. I don't run low on end at all unless it's a +1LT hitting me more often and making me use Rad Aura to stay in the fight. Even then I usually don't run low enough to be in danger of detoggling. The bank in Atlas Mayhem got me close because the PPD were continuously ambushing me as soon as the vault was breached. Basically, I don't waste end on misses. I rarely see less than 95% chance to hit between RI and def debuffs in Nut Bolt and X-Ray. Also, those are pretty light attacks to begin with. But coming from playing Stalkers mostly... boy does it seem like forever to chew through a LT. Will be better when I can start with Proton Volley, I suppose. I chose an Ice/Rad Stalker to team up with Flea initially for that reason on the SO challenge. Gamma Boost at level 4 is essentially Stamina when you're healthy and Health when you're not. So yeah, in lieu of not getting endmods to slot, it's the next best thing maybe. I've tried a Staff/Nin Scrapper for a bit outside of challenges and it's nice. Staff has the endurance discount mode and Ninjitsu on Scrappers has the +end clicky. I would lean to Katana here for the def debuffs though, again, to combat lack of good acc slotting. Haven't done bio yet. As Flea points out, Staff and Bio on a Scrapper or Tank would be bonkers from a mode switching standpoint. Only thing is, it doesn't tick my accuracy check box. I'd still be reliant on good acc slotting whereas Katana gets 1.05x accuracy inherent and deals stacking def debuffs. I'd be tempted to try Kat/Bio or Kat/Rad but neither grants melee/lethal defense to stack with Divine Avalanche. It would still help since Bio gets a mix of res/def and layered defense is pretty robust. I'm curious to try it, but on a challenge like this, thinking it's better to go with the devils I know.

I've only made it to 9. Slowing down some. Level 8 was a kick in the teeth. Had a full tray of useless enhancements and then some. I MAY have gotten one useful DO the entire level. And only maybe two others were tech DOs but they were stuff I can't use now like hold duration or resist damage. It's clear this would never work even close to well enough without making enhancement drops at least match the origin of the player getting them OR by ensuring a consistent pool of origin types from each enemy type. I got a whole string of mutation/magic and mutation/science DOs from longbow. I wondered if running an arc that was mad science related had anything to do with it or if that was just coincidence. Took a chance running Atlas Park Mayhem at 9. Even trying to be careful about ambushes I still got several at a time and needed to eat insps to stay alive. Fortunately, Rad Infection + a small purple is pretty good protection. If I don't get stunned. Thinking you made the better choice with Dark Blast, but I still would have gone with Rad Infection for the -def. AM is nice when it's up, but with that slotting and unslotted Hasten it's up, what.. half of the time? Maybe I'll take a break and try a Rad/Rad corruptor Goldside for comparison. On the other hand... a Kat/Ninjitsu Scrapper could be pretty good poorly enhanced. Light/fast attacks with -def like Rad Blast. +def attack that is stackable early on. +end clicky in the secondary. Minor stealth... hmmm. Might be more interesting territory to run over since you're already doing a defender.

I have been on Everlasting since March and Excelsior for about a week. Excelsior seems more active redside to me just going by global chat but I haven't spent a lot of time outside Mercy yet there.

This. There is only so much control you can expect to be able to have over a random pick-up group. If that kind of chaos is not one's bread and butter... look for regulars.

Wish I'd seen this before hopping in game just now, but I tried it anyway on an alternate build and yeah, even with Hide + Stealth + SS = 240ft stealth radius, the level 50 Rikti Drone still saw my Level 50 Stalker and took a shot at me. I also picked up a power analyzer. The Drone had a Perception Radius of just 35ft, meaning yeah, it ignores stealth. It doesn't see through it with perception. I thought that was the case but it's nice to confirm it. Thanks for posting the vid again.

I've not bothered with stacking Stealth on Hide myself. It used to be more of a PvP only thing and I've read plenty of conflicting reports that does or doesn't help with Rikti Drones. Either way, they are a minor nuisance not worth an entire power choice unless you have some other reason to take Concealment pool. Stealth does provide a small defense buff like Combat Jumping does.

Fair point. I should have said faster.. not fast. Getting 1-7 in an hour or so probably already seems "fast" by comparison to where you're at now.

Either that or sticking to a particular origin per enemy type would be better than truly random. With such a large pool of origins enhancements, making them random across the whole pool just effectively means reducing the rate of usable enhancements greatly. At least if they were locked to the enemy type you could try to steer yourself towards those arcs or, worst case, spend some time street sweeping for enhancements. Often blueside you are given a choice of contacts to be introduced to next that mentions the enemy type right there in the choice window, so it would help. It's all irrelevant now, of course with abundant means of getting exactly what you need... when you're not doing crazy challenges anyway. 😘

I wish I remembered how this worked way back in the day. I don't remember if drops were 100% locked to a particular origin or just more likely to lean that way. What I do remember is using TOs at this level. They were nearly pointless to use even back then but we did anyway because who wants empty slots? Now that they aren't available, we're trying to do something the game never originally intended: Slotting DOs in levels 1-10. If I were to try to fill the remaining slots in my level 7 pic up there with purchased DOs it would cost me almost double what I currently have in inf. Then again, leveling is fast down here. As we go up, the number of enemies defeated per level goes up dramatically. So there should be more drops to fill available slots... hopefully.