ZemX

Just about every PuG controller/dom I've ever met does worse when they glue enemies to the floor while they're spread all over the damn place. Hell, Fold Space is one of the few things that can "fix" that problem if used properly. And it's massively useful in Praetorian maps where the devs saw fit to spread the mobs all over the place almost to the point you can't identify where one spawn ends and the other begins and THEN they gave them exclusively long range attacks so they've no incentive to gather up on a Tank. I'll take the occasional "poofgone" given the upsides. If someone really does yank a whole mob away from me, they can have it. I'll go get the next one ready.

It doesn't really. Yes, it appears to jump the timer back upward when the FF proc expires, but it does not really jump all the way back up to where it would have been had the FF proc never fired. If that were the case, the proc would be almost entirely useless.

Not true. Think of Hasten's recharge timer like an hourglass with sand running through it. And you've got a control knob that can widen or narrow the "waist" in the middle of the hourglass. FF:rech is like twisting that knob to widen that waist, at a random moment, and leaving it that way for 5 seconds, then putting it back where it was. That sand does not run back up the hourglass. While it was open wider, more sand ran through it. That's all. You are, for a short five seconds, speeding up that clock so that it runs down faster. There is now less sand in the top of the hourglass than there would have been if you hadn't turned that knob briefly. But I see where you're coming from. In game what you might see if you've changed your recharge timers to show numbers on each power, is that when FF:rech pops, that number changes suddenly to a lower number. Then when FF:rech drops, it might even appear to go up to a higher number. But here's what is happening: The recharge timers just show how much time is left to recharge that timer based on your total recharge buffs right now. There's no way for the timer to know that two seconds from now a +100% recharge buff will hit and last for 5 seconds. When it does happen, the game recalculates assuming that +100% buff is going to last forever. Key point here is that yes, the timer appears to jump back upwards, but it is not going back up to where it would have been at this moment, if the FF:rech had not fired off. It's still a lower timer value than it would have been without the proc firing 5 seconds ago. To put it another way, if you kept counting down in your head for those 5 seconds, you'd find that more than 5 seconds had been removed from the clock because the FF:rech fired. Mid's is the same way. If you check the little yellow bubble that says the proc is active, it adds +100% recharge and calculates all recharge times as if you had that +100% for the entire time the power was recharging. If you look at the window that shows totals for "misc buffs" you'll see you have an absurdly high global recharge rate. If you want to look at your real recharge rate, you have to uncheck all the proc bubbles for powers where you have FF:rech slotted. Mid's can't tell you how much benefit FF:Rech actually provides because it depends on too many variables.: How often will you activate that power during Hasten's effect? How many enemies will you hit with it each time so we can calculate how many procs to expect? What if one proc overlaps with itself, cancelling out some of its 5 second duration. This is why I said the math was a bit maddening before. What Mid's could do is ask you how many times per minute you expect all your FF:rech procs to fire and then calculate the effective constant rech boost just like I mentioned in previous posts. It still wouldn't be exact, but it would be more useful. This is why I say treat it like it's a rather decent but much smaller +recharge. Like 10% or 15% maybe. And then forget that it's even in there. Stop watching your buff bar like a hawk to see when it's icon is popping up there (I am guilty of this myself btw). Hasten's recharge will vary exactly by how successfully it procs, but it's not important WHEN it procs. It matters how many times and, like you said, whether it procs 3 times or 4 while Hasten is recharging has little practical effect except occasionally noticing a few seconds more gap in Hasten's uptime. There's nothing wrong with that. You still got the benefit of Hasten's boosted recharge for the last two minutes.

Yes. 100% chance and stacks with existing effect. Have a look here for the RechargeTime effect on the right side of the page. https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=pool.fighting.cross_punch FF:rech is a small burst of speed whereas LotG:rech is a constant speed increase. But what we know is the total amount of constant speed improvement we need to make Hasten recharge in 120s thus making it "perma". So converting FF:rech's small speed bursts into the equivalent long-term constant speed boost lets us add it together with all other sources of +recharge to arrive at the required amount of recharge you need. But it's tricky. Think of your base 100% recharge speed then assume you get one FF:recharge every minute. It lasts for 5 seconds. So now, instead of a constant 100% recharge over that minute you now have 5 seconds of 200% recharge followed by 55 seconds of normal 100% recharge. (5x200 + 55x100) / 60 gives us the weighted average of 108.33. In other words, that one proc was the same as a +8.3% constant recharge boost would be over the same one minute time period. So 1ppm for FF:Recharge is slightly better than a single LotG:+rech IO. But you can almost certainly do better than one FF:Rech per minute, even in one power and especially in an AoE. The proc doesn't stack, ever, but it replaces itself if it occurs while already in effect refreshing the duration. So that makes it tricky again to precisely calculate its overall effect. But you don't really need to be that precise. So thinking of a single FF:rech as being close to a single LotG:Rech is probably underestimating its effects by quite a bit. The key really is trying to determine how many times in the two minutes Hasten is up and running, do you get those 5 second bursts of speed from FF:rech. Then yoiu can calculate how much those FF:Rech procs are "worth" compared to all the other recharge you need to make Hasten perma. Hopefully that made more sense. It's not all that straightforward, I'm afraid.

Without delving too deep into maddening math, the short answer you can find with a little searching for perma-hasten is that you need +275% recharge to make Hasten permanent. 70% of that can come from Hasten itself IF it is perma, so let's just assume that and work from there. You now need +205%. If you slot roughly 100% recharge enhancement in Hasten, then this number drops to 105%. That's the amount you need to add to your build with global recharge via set bonuses, Incarnates, buffs, whatever. Force Feedback is an odd duck to account for though because of its unreliable nature. But I recall seeing someone once claim that you can use, as a rule of thumb, the notion that a single FF:Recharge IO is often about equivalent to a single LotG:+recharge IO. In other words, about 7.5% global recharge, give or take. That's assuming you regularly use in an attack chain, whatever power you have the FF:rech IO (or IOs) slotted in. So tally each FF:rech and multiply by 7.5%. Same for each LotG:+rech. Then all your set bonuses. As for Cross Punch, yes, it's +10% for 6 seconds. While it CAN self-stack, you have to ask yourself how much you're really going to be using it. Are you even going to be able to use it once per 6 seconds? Then count it as a +10% global recharge. Once per 12 seconds? Figure just 5% then towards your perma-hasten goal. This is rough, but it will get you close enough to take it for a spin and see how you are doing.

I know this. Try getting a team to do it though. On a team, effectively, every single one of them will rez. It is the rare exception where you can knock one away and nobody runs over to feed some of their life to it.

I think I'd agree. LTs should not upgrade to bosses they should just transform into another full health LT wolf. It's enough to have to kill them twice, I'd say. Bossses can turn into bosses, if that's a thing. I also wouldn't be sad if the rezzers (and that includes Super Stunners over there in the Freakshow too) got hit with a "chance of" nerf bat. Even if it's just 50% chance that would be a lot less annoying than every single one rezzing every single time.

I don't solo a lot. Does it really throw boss werewolves at you when they transform, even if you don't have solo bosses = true in your notoriety setting?

And the lead was level 20? Because I've never seen this one go this bad unless it involved starting at under 20 on a SF that always bases enemy level at 20. Still had to have something to do with level. All-melee just isn't THAT bad unless a lot of them were under level and sidekicked (ahem.. sorry.. lackeyed) up.

Contaminate is, all around, not something you should pay much attention to because of its somewhat unpredictable (or at least difficult to follow) nature. It feels kind of like an argument I was having recently in /help about Scourge. Someone was deeply concerned they couldn't "make" a Corruptor work because they were annoyed by the unpredictability of Scourge. Instead of trying to make the most of Contaminate (or Scourge on a Corruptor) just forget about it. Let it, statistically, do its thing and it will provide some benefit. Slot Siphon as an attack and treat it like a low-tier attack that just sometimes has a little bonus of healing you tacked on. I wouldn't slot it or use it primarily as a heal. Just put it in your rotation and it will sometimes heal you.

Synapse, Manticore, and Citadel are all zone-hopping kill-all adventures. Synapse even has creaky old patrols in it and perhaps the worst phoned-in copy-paste missions in the whole game and yet, for double merits and/or TFC badge progress, people will do it. So rewards DO work. Not just saying that. Also, important to note, the goal is not for everyone in the game to drop what they are doing and go run mission arcs. If boosting rewards a little encourages even a few radio teams to diversify, then it was worth it. This is about making unused content a bit more attractive. Not changing the whole world. Granted, I've no idea how tedious this might be. It might involve hand-editing hundreds of mission reward tables or something, in which case... tough sell. But if not, then it might be worth doing. Or maybe it can be scripted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This. Mostly if I know what the enemies are doing, everybody else should be fine, but I keep half an eye on those health bars if the fight gets messy (double pull, spread spawn, knockback artists plying their trade, etc.) Generally, I prefer to keep an eye on enemies more than I do on my own team, which is probably why I've never played a buff/heal support or an MM, My ideal PuG toon if I'm in a mood to just do my own thing though is a Stalker. Nobody expects anything of a Stalker. I am not protecting anyone. I'm not buffing or healing anyone. No one even notices that bosses are dying faster. *placates* "I was never here!" *poof*

Almost nobody cares if you are merely "sub-optimal" with build choices. It's when someone's powers start affecting others negatively that people get called "rude". And you don't need a bunch of offline community research for that. You can see that happening right in front of you and learn.... or refuse to.

So after 18 pages of discussion we've arrived at.... the exact thing that happened to the OP as the solution? Well done everyone!

I think just switching Group Fly to opt-in instead of opt-out is the simplest solution unless there's some technical reason that couldn't work on a new toon. Nothing wrong with the Null solution we have other than people either not knowing about it or forgetting about it after character creation. And it's probably a situation where 99.99% of people want it disabled or would want it if they knew about it.

It's a figure of speech. When someone is playing up the virtues of something or somebody, especially themselves, it can be said to be akin to "selling something". "Up to date"? We're playing the same game, man. Don't know how else to say it but you are kind of smoking your own exhaust here. Same thing with repeatedly harping on misinfo. What misinfo? Where do you see people saying things that aren't true and are going unchallenged? About the game, I mean. Generally, any time I see someone being wrong about how something works in game, they get corrected whether that's here or or in help channel in game. This isn't exactly brain surgery, you know? It's just an old game we're ALL quite familiar with. The first part of this is undeniably an advantage and that's why they hang out there. It's what Discord is good at. Immediate communication. Nobody here is denying that. But again, misinfo? Where is this rampant misinformation? How are we out of date? Are we somehow playing an older version of the game?

*checks cubicle for listening devices*

Just as "power creep" implies increasing power, I'd say "rewards creep" implies a reward that is greater than what is currently available. While we're suggesting increasing rewards for mission arcs, I don't think anyone is suggesting making those rewards any greater than rewards already available for other activities. This is more akin to power proliferation than power creep, in other words. The point of it is also the same. To encourage more diversity in content played. Not to make things easier or faster than methods already available. I'm sure that describes a lot of people... just not most people. Not from what I've observed. At least just watching LFG channel, what you see most advertised is the stuff that seems to provide the most rewards. The rewards don't matter as much to me either but if setting out a little bit more candy attracts more people to team with, I'm for it.

I don't think anyone is claiming absolute facts here. I doubt all that information is publicly available. But they are not unreasonable assumptions. Discord is just newer and hence likely to be more popular with younger gamers than a lot of us old farts. That doesn't mean nobody old uses Discord. Of course they do, but I'd be not surprised at all if it skews younger than people who hang out primarily on forums. That said, I'm sure the Homecoming Discord itself skews older than the average Discord community.

I don't think this "Discord is where all the people who are better than you hang out" is quite the selling point for a community you seem to think it is.

I probably haven't run any of the original Atlas mission arcs since Live. If I'm doing anything at that level besides DFB... it's Habashy and Twinshot.

What mechanisms exist on the Discord that prevent this misinformation and drama?

No self-respecting tank earns a badge for avoiding damage!

Two big reasons for that: (1) There's no zone hopping, and (2) The rewards for the rest of the team are the same as running story arcs. That's why I think changing (2) up there could change the equation enough to encourage more mission arc teams. I don't think it would be any dramatic shift or anything but it would help a little and hopefully not be a lot of effort to implement. I wonder if the problem here is that the game can only do this in a Task Force mode like it does in flashbacks. But it would be nice if it could be done outside the flashback system like you say as it would open up that many more mission contacts to be run and nobody would have to worry about outleveling the contact.