ZemX

I know I am. If things still look dire by 9, I will probably stop XP there and start street sweeping enemies that should drop tech DOs.

Speaking of gimped.... I am not doing any better (a little poorer actually) than @Ukase with my own drop challenger, Annie Proton, a rad/rad Defender currently at level 7. But I like the VG I registered for her, "A Drop of Hell" 🤪

Yeah, I didn't get that one either. Stalkers don't really have a distinct playstyle from Scrappers. Most of the time, they both just... scrap. What's different about them has little to do with playstyle outside of occasionally doing the melee snipe from Hide as your first attack. Aside from that, it's generally true that Stalkers do better single-target damage and Scrappers do better area damage, but even then there are exceptions.

In which case the link I posted isn't accurate because it suggests primal clockworks only drop science and science/mutation. It's probably badly out of date. I wonder if what it has to say about Praetoria is true though because it suggests all zone enemies drop the player's origin enhancements. They're not the only enemies that do, but if it's true it might be interesting to see how much easier it is to keep up with enhancements over there vs. blue or red. Hmmm.,,, Neat! This gets more interesting all the time. Course I say that now. We'll see how long I last.

You're allowing use of the Upgrade button? Isn't that just a shortcut for buying enhancements and manually upgrading? In which case, is it considered okay by your rules to buy individual enhancements from vendors solely for the purpose of upgrading ones you have already slotted (which you could only have originally slotted from drops)? I realize this isn't a group challenge, but I always think it's more interesting with these things if people all adhere to more or less the same rules and then share their experiences with them. And on the off chance enough people pile in, there might be the possibility of teaming, which would only be fair if we're all similarly gimped. 🤪 Talisman Enhancements, by the way, are a bit weird. I discovered while doing the SO challenge that they can be upgraded by the Upgrade button even beyond the level you can normally obtain them from Yin's shop. But they only appear to be discounted in price when you buy them from Yin. I think the upgrade button considers them to be SOs and charges the same price it would for any SO upgrade which is why it was asking that much to upgrade the 1s you're given in the tutorial. Thanks by the way for the picture. I'd have thought you'd get more than 1 usable enhancement per level. Unless some of those have been upgraded with drops. FWIW, I have rerolled my rad/rad defender to give this a shot. I haven't gotten anywhere yet, but after the tutorial my power selections are: Rad Infection, Nut Bolt, and X-Ray. In the early levels, I think RI will prevent more damage for less endurance than I could repair with Rad Aura. And its tohit debuff on a Defender is respectable even without the difficult to obtain tohit debuff enhancements. I'll angle for acc in X-Ray as an opener and then multiple Nut Bolts to keep them debuffed and pile in damage. I'm also giving some thought to pausing XP instead of outleveling enhancements. More chance for drops/inf. But we'll see how long my patience with that lasts. By the way, in addition to the link Flea posted about drop rates, this is useful too. It gives a list of enemies that drop different origin enhancements: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/bvgivp/what_enemies_drop_what_do_so_enhancements_guide/ Looks like my villainous tech defender should do pretty well in the Rogue Isles early on. Edited to add: This link might be out of date. Some enemy drops have probably been changed or updated since this information was posted. Sorry!

Just tried it and it 100% aggroes the teleported target. It also has a chance to aggro others from the group you're pulling from but it's probably a low chance. If I had to guess, they probably added TPFoe to Recall Friend and forgot to check the "notify enemies" flag since Recall Friend never needed it. Then somewhere along the line they fixed it.

This was my first thought with the SO challenge too and that was WITH the ability to purchase endmods for Stamina. But you're making me curious now to see how this would go. I had started a Rad/Rad corruptor and defender (wasn't sure which I'd like better) as alt ideas for the SO challenge but I think now I'll be going with established characters and alt builds. I'm more interested in how they play at the end than leveling them to get there. Since this is more of a hardcore leveling challenge (especially the permadeath part), I might reroll the defender and try this just to see how far I get on drops. Rad/Rad has several big advantages: Very good tohit debuff in Rad Infection and low recharge moderate heal in Rad Aura make this one very survivable. AM as you mentioned, helps with recovery. But rad blast helps with accuracy. That might eventually be less important but if I survive that long I doubt it will matter much. I am more interested in hitting what I aim at in low levels and lacking good accuracy enhancement is a real problem as you've already noted once, I think. Another good idea is a Staff/Ninjitsu Scrapper. Staff gets a endurance saving mode. Ninjitsu gets an endurance clicky. You also get minor stealth. Add Super Speed and you can sneak by a lot of stuff on missions if you want. Going to need a base just for this character I think, if for no other reason to save every last salvage drop for future use either with recipe drops or empowerment station buffs.

It's Teleport Target now. It works as both recall friend and teleport foe. If this ever worked with the old TP Foe, it doesn't now. Teleport Target notifies enemies. It might do a decent job of not aggroing others in the group but it WILL aggro the teleported target and it counts as an attack so it will drop stealth and crit meter for 8s. Given that, you are usually better off Assassinating the LT/Boss and then scrapping its minions who will be demoralized by the opening AS (100% chance -7.5% tohit debuff and 25% chance mag 5 terrorized for 8s).

This. In three words, "Cascading Defense Failure". That extra defense cushion is nice for anybody that isn't packing serious Defense Debuff Resistance. And not a lot of people have access to decent DDR. Even some hybrid defense armor sets don't. Being over the soft-cap a decent amount is the difference between surviving a mob of angry sword-wielding Cimerorans... and re-enacting Julius Caesar.

True, but still unnecessary. There is never a case where the screen says "Hidden" and your stealth radius is NOT up, is my point. So if you just wait for that before running up to the next spawn, you'll be fine. It's always worked for me and I play almost exclusively Stalkers. The few cases you're talking about are ones where you can re-enter stealth SOONER than the 8s suppression window in Hide. Still, if you wait to see "Hidden"... you are safe. You just might in a very few cases be waiting a few seconds longer than you need to. But that's it. It's going to be rare that you Placate and then wonder if you are Hidden. You'll usually use it in a fight to control one enemy while you fight others. Whether you are hidden or not after the Placate doesn't much matter in terms of what you do next unless your plan was to Placate and then immediately run through another spawn of enemies that hasn't seen you yet. Same for the Hide proc. When it happens, it's usually just bonus crit damage. It's not something you are watching and then making decisions based on. If you happen to end a fight with a quick AS, you'll immediately be stealthed. The only time this has ever tripped me up (and it's super rare) is when I was leading a hostage with Hide off, fought a group, ended with AS, and ran off leaving the hostage to wonder where I'd disappeared to. It was funny, but it didn't really cause me a problem.

Thanks for the correction. I forgot to look up the minimum for Gauss. Also, not suggesting adding slots. Keep it at the default 1 slot with either recharge or end redux until 18. Then slot the Gauss proc. Stalkers with Assassin's Mark ATO proc don't really need to devote any additional slots to Build Up unless they plan to slot more of the Gauss set for the bonuses. Assassin's Mark will usually recharge Build Up before its natural recharge time elapses, even if you slot recharge reduction in Build Up.

Issue 28: The Coming FOG!

Great minds.... I was last night considering the same sort of thing. I'm getting a little burned out on the Ice/Rad Stalker. It's okay. It's just slow at level 35. Decent leveling when I duoed with Flea, but nothing like a full team. If I want to push to 50 with her, I'll probably start joining teams. But I got to thinking about a couple other 50s Stalkers I have on Everlasting right now. They could use a vacation. I made the original Critical Missy an Ice/Shield Stalker and it's been great on IOs but now I'm curious just how much that holds up on SOs. The thing you immediately notice making a SO build is that you're looking at the actual intended balance. Shield Defense is so highly regarded mostly because of the extras it offers while giving nothing up on defense thanks to IO set bonuses still allowing you to reach the soft-cap. Best I have managed after creating a secondary SO build and even adding Maneuvers on top of the already present Weave is about 31ish % to all positions. Not shabby, but a far cry from the soft-cap. So I added back the T9 power, One with the Shield. Something I never had much use for on IOs. Similarly, I have a Staff/Ninjitsu Stalker who might be even more interesting. Slightly better defense and a big heal. Some psi resist too. Plus I can switch builds and team for other stuff. See how the Excelsior scene is. Maybe I'll like it. I might still level the Ice/Rad but under a different alias. We'll see.

I've been on Everlasting since March when I got into Homecoming for the first time. I've only been on Excelsior the past few days with Flea's SO challenge, so grain of salt, but my impression is that there's more redside activity on Excelsior. It's honestly pretty dead redside on Everlasting despite what the server stats say about the ratio of players. You almost never see contact or paper teams and even not so often any SFs outside of the WST.

I should admit, for the record, that Karma was clearly listening when I laughed at @Bionic_Flea for not being able to kill my SO Stalker with his egregious room-pulling techniques on earlier missions. But Karma was also patient and waited for it to be a mission *I* owned and chose to run at +0/x6 in First Ward so that getting us both killed several times over with Talon ambushes would be entirely MY fault. 🤪 Lesson learned. ... Maybe. 😈

If it's not in your plan already, at level 8 Build Up one-slotted with the Gauss proc and at level 10 Assassin's Mark ATO proc in any ST attack. Stalker's Guile ATO proc in Assassin Strike. Then enjoy all the extra Build Ups you get to fire whenever Assassin's Mark procs, which can happen on any attack you use: primary, secondary, pool... anything. And the Gauss proc should be 90% chance every time you fire Build Up to give you an extra boost for the first few seconds. Enough for your next attack to be extra-boosted. If there's a downside to DM/Invuln it's that you don't have a lot of AoE. ANY attack can proc Assassin's Mark, so the more targets you can hit, the better. You might want to plan at least one more AoE from a pool or epic. Darkness Mastery isn't among the most popular epics... but it does have THREE very sizeable cone attacks that can hit up to 10 targets each. Something to consider. Anything that hits enemies, even powers that don't do damage, can proc Assassin's Mark and give you another Build Up.

Don't monitor stealth radius. I'm not sure what that wiki quote is on about but the "meter" (which determines whether you get a critical hit from Hide) and the stealth radius effect of Hide are both Suppressed by the same conditions: AttackedOther, Damaged, and MissionClickObject. Both for 8s so the Hidden status will appear exactly when the suppression ends on both stealth and meter. You can rely on "Hidden" to tell you "My stealth radius is up again". Incidentally, the translucent visual effect is also governed by the same mechanics, though it is less noticeable than the big green "Hidden" text. The wiki is probably just saying what others here have been saying. You can still be seen by certain high percep enemies like Rikti Drones and Rularuu Eyeballs. You can still be attacked if an enemy is already aggro to you or becomes so because of killing a linked ally or because they are a player-targeted ambush sent after you. That's it. If you're being attacked now, it's not because something saw through Hide. As to Placate, it's not entirely useless but... don't take it to obtain another critical hit. Whatever damage you gain from that has already been lost in the animation time of Placate. Take it only to use it as a defensive control. It will make an enemy stop attacking you. That can be useful if you get in over your head and need some relief. Maybe you aggroed a second nearby group and you can placate its LT/Boss while you mop up a little more. Still, it's uses are limited and power slots are precious in the lower levels. Almost anything else you chose from your primary, secondary, or power pools, would be better at level 12 than Placate. Unless you just like the "Jedi Mind Trick" aesthetic of it THAT much. Oddly enough, I have lately found the opposite power Presence:Provoke, more useful on my Stalkers. One issue you'll face is stuff running from you. Stalkers have even lower threat level than Scrappers and no aggro or taunt auras (in most cases, I think) to help keep things near you while you deliver them to the beyond. Provoke helps there. But it's also mid-build or later material, I usually find. And you may find you don't mind chasing your food a little and that's one more power slot for something more useful.

Okay, so upgrading from TE Acc 21 to 26 cost 31,104 inf. Which is a little odd. That's what a normal level 26 Acc SO would probably cost. A level 25 Acc SO is 29,952. So maybe they just price like normal SOs to the upgrade button once past level 20?

Anyone else having a go at this? My Ice/Rad Stalker is 20 and Flea's Tank is at least 22 last I saw him. I do miss Kismet:Acc. It's been so long, I'd forgotten it was usual to do two Acc SOs in an attack.

No, I think you pretty much said it. Whether for profit or not, the game still lives or dies by how many people are interested in playing it. Sure, you could have a little personal server for just you and a few friends, but what fun is that compared to this? Either way, your motive is to give the players enough of what they want so they'll stay.

Interesting. I tested this just now with a level 20 TE Acc. I had just slotted all level 20 SOs at level 17. I am now level 18., so when I hit Upgrade it tells me the price of upgrading to level 21 enhancements. I changed out one of the SO Acc with a TE Acc, same level 20. Punching "Upgrade" gave me 32 enhancements that could be upgraded. Exactly how many I had including the TE. Used an unslotted on just the TE and it came down to 31 enhancements. The difference in cost of the upgrade (level 20 to level 21) was 25344 inf. Which is exactly what the wiki said an old level 21 TE acc should cost. So I guess it does auto upgrade TEs. I'll leave it in there and see if it will keep offering to upgrade it as I earn a few more levels. You would normally be able to 100% chance upgrade a Level 20 TE using another level 20 TE. If it still allows this for Level 22 then it's offering an upgrade you can't normally do by hand. Loophole? 😁 Edit: Got to 20 and it was still telling me it would upgrade TEs. I'll check on the cost again with another unslotter next time I'm in and again when I'm at 22. But it does look like it's just charging a single TE's worth of inf per enhancement to upgrade. That's astronomically less than it would cost to do the upgrade by hand, of course.

I'm not sure I do. It looked to me like @Luminara's point was that the more complex, more involved, and more challenging content and enemies of Goldside simply aren't a draw for most players. You then appear, to me at least, to be providing a second example of that same point. Redside is newer and generally better content than original blueside, with a few more challenging enemies. It's again less played. It's not that there aren't people who value that kind of content. I'm certainly one. It's that there are few of us compared to the whole population. What you see in global chat channels more than anything is people running repeatable easy content like fire farms in AE, DFBs in Atlas for newbies, and PI radios for easy enemies that can be wholesale stomped repeatedly for easy XP and leveling. Mothership raids. "Kill Most" ITFs. We all see that stuff 10x more than anybody saying "Who wants to join a mission team in Night Ward!?" I'm not saying don't try it. I think the devs have the right "add, don't change" attitude here and if that's what you're saying too, I don't have a problem with it. More options are better than fewer. I just don't see it as solving some game-wide problem. It will make people like me happy. The folks sitting inside the door of a fire farm won't even notice.

Enemies like this already exist and most people actively avoid them if they can. I once asked why it was so much more common for people to run radio teams than tips teams, given the tip missions seemed so much more interesting to me. The answer I got? "It's not as easy to control what enemies you get." And that tracks my experience. I see plenty of people advertising for "Council PI Radio" teams. About nobody saying, "Come join my Carnie radio team! Find out which of your teammates has no psi protection!" As far as I can tell, the problem with your whole proposition here is that this sort of challenge is not what people are seeking. Pre-50, people seem to be looking for one thing only: Getting to 50. The only place new and interesting challenge content will be welcomed by all is at the Incarnate level, I'm afraid.

I guess that depends on how the "Upgrade" button works exactly. Does it even work on TEs or do you have to manually combine them still? If it does work, does it ignore the fact that you can't buy higher than level 20 TEs or does it stop working at level 21? If you do need to manually combine to go over level 21 then each level above that adds another 5% chance of failing since you have only level 20 purchased TEs to combine with the ones you have slotted. But I suppose you can just consider that the cost of buying each new level of TEs. And you're paying that every level on every slot. Not every five. At 40 you have zero chance to upgrade further. Well... unless you unslot all those 40s and repeat the whole upgrade process. Then you can combine your full set of slotted 40s with your unslotted 40s to produce 41s with a 100% chance of succcess. You can imagine the cost from there. 🤪

Isn't that whole section what was added with the new Vahz story arcs? What I learned there is that I need to update my Vidiot Map. 🤪