Triumphant

OMG! That's perfect. I can totally envision that scenario! 🤣

I like beam rifle. It looks and sounds just like what I would expect a beam rifle to look and sound like. Also, it's highly effective. Having said that, there are probably plenty of people that share your veiwpoint. Neither of us are wrong. Both of us are right, because that is our actual experience in using the powerset. I have a similar dislike (well, my reasons for disliking it are different than your reasons for disliking beam rifle, but still) for bio armor. Bio armor is widely (and correctly) touted as being a great armor set. But I don't like the look of it (though that is much improved with minimal effect settings) and I find it even more fiddly and clicky to use than rad armor, which is sort of at the outside limits of what I can handle with an armor set (though I'm levelling a regen armor character now, and trying to overcome this deficiency, because I really love the idea of the set). Point is, it's totally okay for people to hate the things I like or vise-versa. This game has a little something for all tastes. Keep trying AT's and powersets, eventually you're bound to find something that's perfect (or near perfect) for you play style and preferences (probably, you have your favorties already. Some of these might be sets that are not thought of as being more popular power sets. I know that I love Street Justice with a passion that is proportionately disparate from it's actual level of combat performance, for example. But the reason I love it is not because it's the highest DPS combat set, but because the look and feel of the animations perfectly emulate the thing that it is trying to emulate. Any and all of the above is okay, of course. This game caters to all comic-booky tastes. That's part of what's so great about it. 😎

My favorite is Arachnos in terms of both visual appeal and as challenging foes throughout the levelling process. After that, probably IDF.

This is actually interesting to me: Not so much as a challenge, but because I never considered trying to build a character and ignoring most of the attacks from your main powerset. It could be an interesting, challenging, and (who knows?) even fun way to approach the game by trying to make a viable character that relies more on pool powers and epics. LOL. Okay, I see what you did there. 🤭 What are you, some kind of sadist? 😝

I think the ones that I find most irritating are the illusionists and master illusionists. You have to hit them before they phase out or else wait until they phase back in to dmg them. Also, they're summoning those stupid, irritating phantom dudes that are basically unhittable and also (hatefully) stick around well after you've killed the illusionist. Extremely annoying. Those are probably my most hated enemy so far as mobs are concerned.

I am no build expert, by any means, but I do play a lot of Brutes (among my favorite AT's). Brutes can get very good resistance, but you aren't going to get as high as a Tank. Being the immovable object is the Tanks signature feature. But Brutes can be quite tough, yes. My own EM/INV brute looks like this before activating T4 Barrier: Smashing/Lethal: 90% Fire/Cold: 69.87% energy/negative energy: 53.37% Psionic: 31.72% Toxic: 37.62% When I fire my T4, this shoots up to 90% in everything for a few seconds, before gradually falling to just about 10% above the usual resistance values, until the power triggers again (I have it set to auto-fire) after the 2 minutes expire. I imagine there are others (hyperstrike among them- sorry to hear they are feeling unwell these days, btw) who can do a much better job of building than I do, but the point is you can make a Brute easily tough enough to run a PUG (or even solo, for the most part) +4/8 content.

I had originally sort of glossed over this bit of the topic and hadn't bothered with watching the posted video (which, to be fair, actually was pretty humorous). I assumed it would simply be more spiteful criticism of poor plot/writing in Star Wars. These sorts of complaints always make me groan, because frankly, Star Wars has never mainly been about top quality storytelling or peerless acting (Irving Kirshner, Alec Guiness and James Earl Jones not withstanding). Star Wars (granted, this is merely my opinion- feel free to disagree. Many do) is about a modern take on old pulp adventure sci-fi serials, which famously used over-the-top action, melodrama, and somewhat two-dimensional, black and white good guys and bad guys to awaken the spirit of adventure in 12 year old boys who were typically the target audience of such entertainment. Star Wars (to me, anyway), is a modern take on this old form of entertainment, and is meant to appeal to both the 12 year old boy (or girl, sure- why not? Women can enjoy tales of high adventure as much as any of us) and also to awaken the 12 year old boy (or girl) in all of us jaded old adults. To give us that sense of wonder, excitement, and fun that our own imaginations could conjure up when we were children, but which has (perhaps) atrophied a bit in our more mature years. If you want to REALLY dial in on things like writing and acting in Star Wars, then you can do that- sure. That's already been proven in real time by the Disney series Andor. But while I aknowledge that Andor is brilliant science fantasy, it doesn't really feel like Star Wars to me anymore. It departs from the formula to produce something that is a piece of artistic genius on all fronts, but that's not (again, IMO) what Star Wars is about, or what I'm looking for when I read a story or comic, or view a film or TV series set in the Star Wars universe. I want to awaken the 12 year old boy in this tired, cynical, jaded old 54 yrs-aged body and mind, living a very hard life (not trying to piss in anyones ear about it, but thems just plain facts, folks), in a very difficult time for citizens in these United States of America (and also, the planet Earth generally). These days, It's less about want and more about NEED to escape from that grim reality for a little while, to let the wonder of that 12 year old boy fly free and lose myself in another world, just so I don't completely lose what fragile portion of my sanity remains and succumb to a complete mental breakdown. 🤪

Loved the dude in Game of Thrones. A bit hard for me to imagine him as Baylan, just because the personalities of the two characters are so different. Going to be a hard sell for me, whoever plays the role, but I'll certainly give the man a fair shake, given the quality of his acting. Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best. 👍

I think of melee ATs (excepting Tankers, perhaps) primarily as single target DPS with a bit of AOE tossed in there. If you REALLY want to get down and dirty with AOEs, I think you probably want a ranged character. Having said that, I love playing Brutes and I've had good results with Savage Melee and Titan Weapon. Also, remember some armor sets have "set and forget" damage toggles like fire and radiation armor. On melee toons, I tend to look at AOEs as tools for either softening up targets for single target DPS attacks or finishing off weakened foes. Maybe you can't find powers that really feel like the concept you're imagining? (damage/effects-wise, I mean). If you want like a super-powerful melee AOE, you're looking at waiting until incarnate to take Mighty judgement power and build it out up to T4. That thing really gives you the "HULK SMASH!" feel.

*Meh. Posted in wrong topic. I clearly need to go to bed* 🤪

You have to look at debuff resistance, too. I haven't tried ninjitsu, so I don't know what it maxes out at. SR maxes out at like 90 or 95% debuff resistance, I think. EDIT: Defense debuff resistance specifically, I mean.

This person needs @Hyperstrike. Help them, Hyperstrike Kenobi, you're their only hope. 🙏

Not against it. Having said that, I"m more interested in expanding the story with new villains/threats to paragon city and/or the planet Earth.

My feeling is that this is by design. It's what I want out of the AT (similar to what I want out of the Sentinel- my second favorite AT, after Brutes). So, for me, this is not a disadvantage. This is a subjective opinion. I don't find it any more (or less) boring than any other inherent. Brutes have become my most played (and favorite AT), even overtaking Sentinels, which used to be my #1. Both ATs have many detractors. I do feel there was once some justification for this, but the developer tweaks have really addressed those issues for me. I'm very happy with where both ATs are at this point and time. Just one Brute player's opinion. 🤷‍♂️

Don't play VEATS, so I have no useful advice there. I do play things like Controllers sometimes (very squishy), and it's just part and parcel of playing an AT designed to be part of a team in a game that was concieved as a team-oriented experience. If you want to play those kind of ATs solo, you suck it up (i.e. die a lot) until you get enough practice and figure out strategies to deal with the handicap. Eventually, you hit a high enough level and get enough enhancements that you can solo just fine, even with a squishy AT. Playing this way requires one essential quality: Patience. I don't think there is a way aroud this. Otherwise, you have to play on teams (which, is as intended). Again, the caveat here is that I don't play VEATS, so I don't know if any of the above even applies to your situation.

Even after reading all these posts, I don't understand what would be gained by making items either rarer or more expensive. My vote would be no. Having said that, if it were changed as suggested, I would still play the game. I would just find it more tedious (i.e. not as enjoyable) to access the parts of the game that I enjoy the most.

You guys are a hoot! Was going to say I had hung out with some of your crew in an AE farm last week, but it was on Everlasting, so must just be a concidental group with the same theme. Love your pirate galleon base. Great work! 👍

I love this robbits happy, green, smiley mouth! What a great use of the head slots to make that effect! 😁👍

I'm always somewhat hesitant to opine on threads about the mechanics of the game, because my understanding of this is so poor. But, I will say, reading both @dukedukes and @Maelwys posts, that my personal experience playing the game does seem to reflect their critiques on the matter (and I do use a lot of procs in many characters. I really love the idea of them, and find them extremely useful, even if they have some issues, such as those outlined above). I don't use pets very often (or carefully observe how procs affect pseudopets), so I'm not as clear on that point, though I have no reason to doubt Maelwys comments, given that everything else they said feels spot on to me.

Two of my favorite (and best performing) characters are my EM/INV Brute and my SVG/SR Brute. You could try those combos and see how you like them. Endurance is an issue with EM/INV until you can dip into your Epic powers (I take Energy Mastery pool to deal with that), though- YMMV. Both toons reliably solo most content at +4/8, though.

I feel you on both of those, my friend. Whenever I read a well constructed forum post and see the confusion reaction, I always think to myself that the person who reacted that way must simply be too dim to understand the topic, or else they're just a very poor reader. 🤷‍♂️

Given how rancorous this topic is becoming, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have simply asked for a "thumbs up" emoji if you want enhancements to be free and a "thumbs down" if you want them to stay the same. Granted, this would only give us a metric for how people that visit the forums feel on this topic, which I suppose is probably not representative of very much of the player base. But it would serve the same general purpose without all the feather ruffling. And now, having written this, I've contradicted myself in my reply to Tenmix's post on disabling reactions on the forum. Ah, well. 😁🤷‍♂️

I actually do empathize with the OPs general sentiment here, even if I have to admit that the responses are pretty funny. 😄

The highest praise I've heard of this film thus far, was from a BattleTech gaming buddy of mine. His kid asked him to go see it. He'd seen the trailer, and thought the dog wearing a cape looked stupid and had very low expectations. He told me, after he got back, "I was wrong. I was SO WRONG. This movie is everything a comic book movie should be." He's really picky about that kind of stuff, so now I'm sort of stoked to see it (will still have to wait until it comes out on streaming, though).

Great. I hope your base never gets wiped out. I'm not willing to take that gamble, and neither are most people who put a lot of time into their bases.