Lazarillo

Appreciated, guys. Doesn't talk me out of it, but helps me understand what I'm in for! 🙂

Hmm, it seems to be about on par with others, though maybe it's more about the animation times and/or the lethal/toxic damage combo (or now that I think about, the fact that it's on par...after factoring in the DoT damage?). That's fair. I actually like most of 'em (not Spine Burst, admittedly), but that's always gonna be kinda subjective (like I don't enjoy Axe/Mace because of recycled animations within the set, among other things). I'm guessing that's not where the F-rating comes from in this case, though, but maybe we're all more slaves to style than I was thinking!

So, legit curious, why does Spines rate so low for Brutes? I mean, I know it's popular for farming, but outside of that, it seems exceedingly rare, and the initial post here ranked it an "F". Does it really do that abysmally? And if so, can someone explain, perhaps, how it malfunctions so badly? Just sort of looking at it, it seems like it should be pretty nice and Brute-y to me, but I don't have any firsthand practice with it...

I like this idea, and it'd be fun to be able to trick-or-treat in a wider variety of zones. Only difference of opinion is, say, use GM code on the door spawns so that they just always con at-level, or similar.

I feel like Sentinels are so out of whack that balancing APPs before actually fixing the AT as a whole and really understanding what they're going to be about, is probably a bit of an unnecessary side-track.

One note regarding Panacea, that I haven't seen anyone else mention yet: because it's an HP boost/heal rather than a regeneration increase, once you slot it, it will constantly tick its heal numbers above your character's head. This ticking effect can't be turned off (except by using a certain P2W temp power that turns everything off, and is all or nothing). This may matter to you, or may not. Personally, I won't use it because I find it pretty annoying,

While ATs do have different "ranged" and "melee" damage modifiers, these don't interact with how an attack is typed for purposes of defense. In fact, for example, most of the ranged attacks from melee ATs' APPs actually do damage as "melee" attacks for the purposes of damage modifiers and not being underpowered that way, but they do still properly tend to flagged as ranged attacks for the purposes of defense, as far as I can recall.

I'm pretty sure Succubi do go all the way up to 50? Or maybe I'm the one with the funky memory. I do like the idea of expanding the ranks of the boss mages to include more than just the waves of purple, though.

After the expansions given to Crey, I got to thinking, even more than that group, it's weird how the CoT only have one "element" per level range. You've got the Fire Thorn Casters from 30-34, Earth from 35-39, Air from 40-44, and Ice only from 45-50. It's cool to see them woven in kind of one at a time, but it'd be neat if once they were in the lineup, they stayed as part of it, with CoT by max level having a variety of different mages involved. And as noted, this feels more organic than reversing Crey's previous "they get more high tech as they go up in level" thing, so it works even better from the story side of things, IMO. Plus, if you look at the CoT "Possessed Scientist" enemies that appear on Peregrine around Portal Corp, they can also use the powers of all types of Thorn Casters, so it seems like it'd just be a matter of "proliferating" the enemies to use more traditional CoT garb, too.

If you're engaged in such insignificant villainy that some random passersby questioning your "reputation" sets you off, trust me, you're not being taken seriously anyway.

Should have PvP force-enabled in all red side zones. No classy villain would tolerate some brainless thug coming onto their turf and who going psychopath on all the potential pawns.

I hadn't envisioned it as anything that complicated...more just sort of an extension of what the OP suggested. More of an in-character/player option where there's a minimal FX option and one just adds a "$$ cc[x]$$" (or cce) to their shapeshift binds and sets it up on their own, rather than a mandatory "squid slot" or "lobster slot".

You get full XP, yes, for both defeats, interestingly (probably intentionally) this goes for whether they heal to full or not. So the "ideal" is to always keep one person and only one person near the Super Stunners when they go down, so you can re-defeat them with only a sliver of health for the regular rewards.

Apologies, I called them your words, but they were Doomguide's. This is where I take issue: ...again, if that's the case, then anyone not building to have more than 45% defense right now is doing it "wrong", and I take issue with that.

If neither is true, why is it that a Scrapper would "get annihilated" on Relentless without doing so, according to your claim?

I'd rather imagine that than imagine only one type of build is considered the right way to play this one.

Which is a damn shame because that just ends up hurting people who don't minmax even harder.

This is very close to an idea that I've had for a long time. I like to call it the "Vanguard", though I suppose that name has certain connotations already in the game. Primary Assault, Secondary Pets. Pet set attacks are replaced by theme-appropriate defensive skills (Ninjas get stuff from Ninjutsu, Demons get Fiery Aura, etc), though I imagine it more as basic armor toggle, second armor toggle, mez protection. Even your idea for an inherent is kind of similar to my own. I expand it a little bit, though. Vanguard Inherent: Tactical Flow - "A Vanguard is master of controlling the pace and intensity of a battle. By focusing fire with unit, each member will do additional damage. However, when the group splits up, they throw the battlefield into a controlled disarray, reducing enemy accuracy." In execution, basically, attacks from the PC and every pet a non-stacking accuracy debuff on whatever they attack (unstackable even from multiple sources, a la Bruising), but also a unique "tag"-type debuff (like Decelerated from Time Manipulation). And damage dealt is multiplied by the number of unique tag debuffs the target has.

It generally does, though the protection you can get depends on the source. IIRC, vectored defenses aren't useful against the most common Terrorize-inducing skills (Longbow pets and enemies that use the Terrorize skill just flat out), though it can be against some of them (KoV, for example).

That also only has 50% uptime at best, so I feel like it's still doesn't overcome what a boon innate Terrorize protection is. Confusion less so, since Tactics can provide that, albeit at low mag, but enough to constantly hold back at least one stack, but that's where Hybrid as a "backup" works a little better.

I feel like it's worth noting that /Dark, /Willpower, and /Shield are the only defense sets that give protection to Terrorize, which is the only status hole that can't be compensated for elsewhere in a build. To that end, I feel like they deserve more respect, at least for people planning to play through a significant portion of the content.

Back in the i5 days of hours leveling in the Hollows, My first-ever character joined on to my first-ever Cavern of Transcendence run. This was, of course, back when lowbies were weak and enhancements were rare and you had to fight all the way to the door and hope nobody got stuck. But as we pushed through the mobs Trolls in the tunnels, my little lowbie Regen Scrapper started feeling more confident, and ran just a little too far to the front and discovered some of the Trolls have bombs. Now as far as why this is relevant to this thread, it's because one of my teammates came up close gave me a wakie, and sent a Tell alongside it, dropping on me quite possibly the most insightful thing I've heard in the game, with linguistic mastery that I've seen duplicated only perhaps by Shakespeare. That one Tell that put everything in perspective? Why can't kids these days be that poetic?

I feel like the VEAT inherent is fine as is. It's not "fun", but the ATs are generally strong and effective with the way it works as-is. Plus, the way things go, changing it to a proc on all attacks would mean VEATs have to constantly deal with "DOMINION!" getting spammed on the screen whenever it went off, and that would get old fast.

In fairness, Doms already have Spines. Also, was Sword+Gun the "power set" for one of the Korean signature characters (though I don't think he ever made it into the actual game)? So it's totally without precedent.

I will go a little on the side of the TC here and note that it's not like such a process would need to eliminate shapeshifting, either. For example, it'd actually be kind of neat to tie form changes to a costume change and "build your own" Dwarf or Nova appearance. NPC models are, honestly, kinda boring. So I get that. And it seems like it need not be an animations issue since you can preview the Nova/Dwarf powers these days in the outfitter, and it'll show an animation in the human form you preview from. So it seems feasible, at least, although whether it's worthwhile is left as an exercise to the reader. But all that aside, Shadow Cloak, specifically, needs a Min. FX version, dammit. My WS gets stuck with an NPC form even when in human form!