Lazarillo

Is there anything to react to then, besides just assuming that reasoning? Incarnate XP is off in AE. Testing done, no?

This is sort of related to one real hangup I see coming. ITFs, in general, are fun to run but a pain to set up because they can be done so many different ways. "Let a 50 have the star" is pretty much the only thing that's always agreed upon. "Oh, this is a 3* ITF? I wanted a 2*." "I'm only here for the hardest diff, our team of 7 level 35s and a non-Incarnate 50 better do 4* or bust!". It gets even worse because at least with the base difficulty system, you can adjust after a mission goes particularly well or poorly.

Only for farmers. There's never been much real incentive to step into it for non-farm players. This change will give it even less.

¿Por qué no los dos? is favorite maxim of mine.

He's in perma-jail, until/unless new writing staff decide to do something new with him. The original dev team had plans to use him to take up Statesman's mantle at least in the short-term (maybe longer if people liked the idea), but that was part of the Battalion story and never made official (unless you count NCSoft trying to use it for their failed DotA clone).

If it's not that big of a change, then isn't it still a waste to do it?

It's a bit annoying because as usual, it feels intended to curb farmers, but does even more to reduce incentives to people who'd otherwise use AE in its "intended" fashion.

Looks like a neat idea, especially with the pet not really being a "pet", it opens it up to a broad number of potential concepts. Not a huge fan of the music notes in all the animations, though. A note-free version would feel much more versatile.

AE had rewards nerfed to slow farmers, which has somewhat ironically led to only farmers wanting to use it due to the general feeling of a low "return on investment" for non-farmers. Thus few people use AE for what it's "for" anymore.

Frostfire is the last mission in Flux's arc. What else in it are they supposed to stick around for? As for Laura Lockhart, they may simply not have an interest in that (it's a more solo-oriented arc, after all). And on the flip side, it becomes difficult, often, to stick to the Hollows because the outright frakumulatous amounts of XP that tends to come from running Frostfire at x8 also often means you outlevel the next contact there, too. As another alternative, it could be that, with Frostfire, specifically, they were there just for the badge. All in all, seems like there are more reasons to go "hey, that was fun, thanks" and be on one's merry way afterwards, than the opposite?

Eh, I'm not looking to inflict myself on 7 people playing tour guide for me. I'd rather just experience it on my own, and none of the rewards are particularly compelling.

I didn't enjoy it at a lower difficulty, so I've never bothered to re-run it. Maybe if it gets an "SSA"-level version so I can actually learn what's going on...

AE's already nerfed for "normal" play, and I end up avoiding it on HC as a result. Further nerfing it, or not, wouldn't make much difference, sadly. What seems more reasonable, and what I don't understand, is why they don't turn MARTy back on?

My expectations are pretty low. I figure the most likely reason for long intervals between patches is that the volunteer staff has just been too busy to work on the game.

I like how, past level 25-ish, I think it is, you have to sit on your thumbs after every mob of Tsoo because your run speed is debuffed to the point of effective immobilization for the next minute or so. Wait, no, not love. What's the other thing?

Not a bug per se. This is sort of connected to extremely screwy mechanic. I don't know quite understand the code, but I can explain the results I think: Essentially, for purposes of enhancements, +Damage, and +Resistance are the same thing. If you were to somehow glitch/hack content to put a Damage SO into Temporary Invulnerability, it would actually give a +33% buff to the power's Resistance instead. In fact, at one point, it was actually possible to exploit this to get extra buff values to certain resist powers by using Hamidon Enhancements. The Cardiac Alpha essentially works the same way. The key, however, is that there are no powers that can be enhanced for both Resistance and Damage, and Alpha slot buffs are programmed only to buff powers that take enhancements of the proper type. Thus, it shows up as a damage buff, but only provides that buff to powers that take damage resistance enhancements (which no damage-dealing power does). The reason you wouldn't see any damage resistance from the Cardiac power itself in your real numbers is for similar reasons: because Alphas don't, strictly speaking, buff stats, but rather, they act as an additional enhancement in on each power. You can see the actual effects by removing the Alpha power, taking a look at how much Resistance you're getting from a toggle power (e.g., Dark Embrace), then re-equipping it and checking how much resistance the same power is providing. It should be more (probably roughly 10% more).

Probably not. The reference to those two leading the Skulls didn't come until a couple years after the Hollows was introduced to the game, and even when it did, it was a website lore article going "Oh, uh, yeah, those two random bosses from a couple different one-off missions? Yeah, those guys were totally the leaders of the Skulls all along." It wasn't until Doc Aeon started doing the whole Neo-Skulls thing that was left incomplete, when that was written into the in-game lore as anything beyond a couple names getting drawn out of a hat.

Hide makes you transparent while you're inactive but doesn't completely erase and replace your costume the way that WS stealth does. Warshades basically get locked to one specific Human form appearance the same way they are in Nova and Dwarf.

There are already fairly sufficient AoE debuff sets. The "collateral" debuffs in Poison should feel more like a little bit of an extra, rather, I think they should stay in their current form that way, but increase in power (or make them irresistible?) to make them more focused on single-target strength. Generally, the same applies to the idea of a "splash heal" on Alkaloid, IMO. Its weakness is how slow it is to activate, first and foremost. Making it an AoE just means it fails on all the pets it doesn't hit because they died before it takes effect. That's not to say Poison couldn't stand to have some love done. But it should excel at its focus, rather than try to be like everything else. Noxious Gas being a toggle (as I think you're suggesting?) rather than a click power with an impossibly long recharge would probably also be a solid way to buff the set, too, though it'd be a bit less useful on sets with ranged pets (which, to be fair, it already is), so maybe make it ally-or-enemy-targetable like the "It burns when I walk!" power from the Sorcery pool?

Dominator love is needed more on a whole-AT basis than in set-specific ways, I feel like. Then again, the same is also the case for Sentinels, so that may be what you're getting at.

There's the converse of that, though, too. It requires Mystic Flight. So Translocation ends up eating significantly more Endurance when used as a primary means of travel due to the constant drain of the flight power as well.

I use it as much for the "mini-Build Up" as anything. It's especially nice with, say, Claws, where I can get the initial To-Hit buff of Follow-Up before I hit my first Follow Up. I'm kinda nonplussed on it for its actual teleportation use though because its animation/rooting time means often as not, it's actually more efficient just to run/jump up to the enemy. It's a fun concept power, though, and not very slot hungry, so I do make some use for it. It's just a little iffy on execution.

In fairness, VEATs came into being back when the idea of power customization was still "never going to happen", so it probably wasn't seen as too important.

For reasons completely independent of this thread, I was toying with a Demon/Pain build in Mids, so I checked to look: For what it's worth, Conduit of Pain costs 32 Endurance and takes 3.2 seconds. Resummoning and buffing a henchman takes between 28 and 36 Endurance, and takes 6 seconds. So depending on what you lose, a rez would be a little more efficient. Though not significantly so, probably. That all said, I get where you're coming from (but still would want my Fallout, dammit!). Sort of. I'm pretty sure that MMs already have access to all support sets as secondaries, anyway.

As long as they also become valid targets for Fallout. I want my bots to have explosive atomic cores that don't respond well to enemies cracking them...