Lazarillo

Yeah, I hear ya. Normally I try to be a little more sporting too. Protean I feel not-so-guilty about cheating on because by the time you're warned he's basically already hitting you, and I play a lot of melee characters.

For future reference, the trick is to pull him to the elevators. Click the door to activate the elevator the moment the warning comes up, and it will override any animations or timing or anything else and just immediately put you in the new spot, as far as the game is concerned, causing his siphon to miss.

This is why I will never not insist that Pitstop be her hero codename, until such time as Pitstop is formally made her hero codename.

So random thought I had last night regarding Domination, the use thereof, and the tendency of Dominators to have to over-rely on Recharge and perma-Hasten and other such bits. What if the power was changed to work like this: 1. The Domination bar builds and empties just the same as it does currently. 2. Rather than a click activation, the benefits of Domination automatically apply whenever the bar is at 90% or higher. 3. The click-Domination instead now auto-fills the bar to 100%, and can be used any time. The thought here is that rather than having to constantly babysit the click powers, Dominators could maintain their empowered state simply by continuing to fight. With the Domination bar emptying more slowly than, say, Fury, this even gives a little time to move between mobs without the ability falling off. The click-on ability from Domination itself would mean Dominators didn't have to work up to the power, but this would likely have to be compensated for in some way, perhaps by making it so that the click power no longer benefited from Recharge buffs? Too strong? Not strong enough? Finicky in ways that would make it unfeasabile?

The RWZ is teeming with "failable" escorts and useless combat support NPCs, but those two issues are related but ultimately sorta different problems just in general, I feel like.

Yep, made a Hovering Sentinel and running into this same problem. Very annoying. 😕

In the 5-9 range, Mr. Bocor's arc, and standalone missions in general, which, while nothing special in terms of story, are a sort of nice "let's be classy, but still be unapologetically evil" atmosphere that works for a low-leveled villain. A few levels beyond that in the 15-19 range, you have The Aeon Conspiracy, and Echo Down the Aeons from Marshal Brass, and Oh, Wretched Man from Seer Marino, which are all really good lore-building/foreshadowing-type arcs. In the 20-30 range, Dean MacArthur is just one of the flat-out best contacts in the game on either side, and is not to be missed. The contact who follows off from him, Leonard, should also be done (as you mostly continue to work with Dean during Leonard's arc, too). Also in the 20-30 is Vincent Ross, who has a pretty good arc for villains who seek UNLIMITEDDDDDDDD POWAAAAAHHH. I find his final mission to be a sort of "lesson" on how absolute power is also absolutely boring, but some people really dig the finale. 25-29, specifically has Diviner Maros who has a cool arc, remarkably snappy dialogue for a 25,000-year-old mage, and his standalone missions are all sorts of cool Butterfly Effect-type preludes to several hero arcs, so if you did a lot of story there, you'll probably enjoy him. Note that if you want to do Vincent Ross' arc, too, do Maros *first*, as if you finished Maros' main arc, he'll get involved in the plot of Ross' arc as well. Also if you have the first Infamy badge in time, Doc Buzzsaw is in the 25-29 range, and her mission dialogue is remarkably fun and and hilarious. Level 30-34 range is the Slot Machine. Like Doc Buzzsaw, it requires a badge, though. It's the one you get on HC for defeating 200 Family Minions/LTs, which you also need for an Accolade, so worth picking up regardless. Its second arc is not very villainous, let's just say, but it's just got some darned good writing. You probably want to avoid Vivacious Verandi, as her arc involves you getting bossed around and just sort of taking it, and that bugs a lot of people playing villains. Level 35-39, I'm a fan of Basse Croupier. He's a pretty cool cat, as they say. You also should start your Patron arcs. You can only get the first one before level 40, but they're all pretty generally well-written. Level 40-44, you can get your second Patron arc. The most "notable" contact in this range is also the most divisive: Westin Phipps, the absolute most colossal scumbag, make-you-feel-sick, "shouldn't I have some standards?" kind of evil there is. In some ways, I feel like he's worth experiencing just so you can understand why so many players hate his arcs, but...just know you've gotta have some stomach for them (the only bit of redemption to be found is that you can betray him at the very, very end by allowing a mission to fail...in a lot of ways it feels really cathartic to let that failure happen but you have to do a lot of really bad crap to get to that in the first place). For 45-50, there's two more Patron arcs, and beyond that, Television, which is offbeat and fun, and Vernon Von Grun, who's similarly offbeat, and fun, and full of mad science, and has the best single-mission NPC ally ever, Becky the Tarantula Mistress. Also Viridian, though the hoops you have to jump through to unlock him are insane, his arc is honestly kinda worth it.

Recently made a shapeshifter character and my sorta "working name" when conceptualizing the costume/build/etc was "Identity". I was shocked when I said "eh, screw it, let's see if the name will work"...and sure enough, it did!

You are a flea, and you need to be loved. Just like everybody else does?

I feel like Assault sets probably wouldn't/shouldn't be as high of a priority just because they're only available as Dominator secondaries. Rather, it's more time-efficient to create more Control sets, since two different ATs would benefit from those. ...unless, of course, HC wanted to create a whole new AT again and give them Assault sets, too, or something?

Nothing would make me run any faster than NCSoft seeing so much as a dime at this point. They had that chance and blew it long ago. I love the HC experience, but I'll sooner virtual machine and solo exist for the rest of my days than participate in a system in which NCSoft gets anything. That said, I also don't think NCSoft has any real match of HC's desire to "negotiate" anyway and figure they're just ignoring them like they've always done, so I'm not really "worried" from that side of things.

I mean, he's the Prussian Prince of Automatons. If he speaks with an accent, it's probably a German one.

You could do that with a sub-pet, too. Just have the upgrades give a new sub-pet that replaces the old one (similar to how upgrading Thugs removes their initial one-pistol attacks while granting them an equivalent dual-pistol power).

I've got a hard no on the Beam Rifle thing. It's just...not in concept for "Mercenaries". You want lasers, go Robots. Plus, having each Merc be unique doesn't really fit the "army" theme either. That said, I haven't played them much since the old days (I had a Mercs/Thermal who got a fair bit of playtime back in the day and was generally "fine" but not exciting), but I feel like...are sweeping changes really necessary anyway? Cut-down the activation times, drop the Recharge on the Spec Ops controls drastically since the AI doesn't know how to use 'em. And cut the recharge/remove the crash on Serum. Bada-bing, bada-boom. You've got your ranged tank-y/control-y pet set.

I have two /Storm characters, and I think they're both pretty awesome. Number one is a Demons/Storm Mastermind where the combo works surprisingly well thematically as just a general "sorcerer" feel, and absolutely rips enemy mobs to shreds. It's pretty melt-tastic. Number two is an Earth/Storm Controller, and that combo is lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. "When you've gotta CC so hard you mez your teammates' graphics cards too", I like to say. Definitely more of a support build than the MM, but on a team, it makes pretty much every encounter into little more than a speedbump.