Lazarillo

Oh, that part, I see no problem with. More my point was that Duray's "air strike", when it actually hits, has no real visuals except for some dust in the air, and the SFX is this really pathetic "ptptptpt" sound. I feel like to work as a Judgment power, it needs to come in more like the Seismic Blast t9, or the like.

I'm going to echo a sentiment already posted a few times, but I've been playing my main a fair bit today, a Claws/Willpower Scrapper and it's, like, almost frustrating that nothing seems to compare in terms of sheer unstoppable steamrolliness (and not just on Scrappers, but any AT, that I can think of). A few solid-but-distant second place options spring to mind (Energy/Willpower comes to mind on the Scrapper front...though again, still /Willpower), but it's a build that covers so many bases so well. It just feels like there's no content (or, at least, no content I'd want to do) that it doesn't do well at, and while it does have a couple shortcomings, what it would sacrifice to play a set that might excel at those shortcomings, is too steep.

It's a neat concept, but the visuals for it in the TF are so...dinky. Seems far from the effect a Judgment should generate.

I would argue that protection against Fear, particularly, doesn't need to be a weakness for such a wide swath of armor sets, doubly so when unlike other weaknesses, it can't be compensated for from pool powers or set bonuses. That's probably a tangent, but always important to note. Still, if we're buffing Regen, no reason not to include something that's needed on a wider level anyway.

Does it need to be an arc that provides a badge currently? On-theme, my first inclination would be one that speaks specifically towards defending citizens, and to that extent, an arc like The Vahzilok Pollutant Plot or its next step up, The Vahzilok Plague. Or similarly, An Unnatural Order or The Unity Plague also work well from this perspective, and are closer to the same level range as Shauna Braun, I believe, if that's important (and also adds some variety: wouldn't be more Vahzilok which are already the feature of Watkins' arc).

Something that struck me as a little weird that I wrote off the other day as not having noticed, or similar, but then caught on to today, after doing a couple others, is that in Mayhem missions, destroying objects, stops increasing the remaining time after defeating the hero and getting a mission complete. It still works before finishing the mission, and completing side objectives or "resisting arrest" (i.e., beating PPD or spawning Longbow ambushes) will work both before and after. But destruction stops. This is not how it was in the past, and I don't recall any patch notes about it, so my guess is that this bug reared itself from somewhere in ye olde spaghetti code at some point.

Talk about a detailed response! Much appreciated! And good to know that accuracy in the attack is still serving a purpose.

After the last update, Laser Beam Eyes apparently now cannot miss, but "damage inflicted will fluctuate the current hit roll". Assuming that that description simply has a typo that should say "...fluctuate based on the current...", the question still comes up, for me: HOW does it fluctuate? Particularly, does this mean slotting it for accuracy now does nothing? Or does making the attack more accurate mean you're more likely to "roll" higher damage?

Small point of note (though it might be seen as a reason to not do this?) is that Rebirth has a "Ninja Assault" set that incorporates the Katana. FWIW, it's laid out like: t1 - "Flashing Blade" - Throws a dagger, normal t1 ranged attack t2 - Gambler's Cut - from the Katana/Ninja Blade set t3 - "Steel Wind" - Throws a fan of daggers, ranged cone t4 - Soaring Dragon - from the Katana/Ninja Blade set t5 - Chi Strike - Like Envenomed Blades from Martial Assault, but energy damage instead of toxic t6 - Scorpion's Sting - Throws a dagger, same animation as t1 but does more damage + DoT t7 - The Lotus Drops - from the Katana/Ninja Blade set t8 - Caltrops - from various other sets t9 - Golden Dragonfly - from the Katana/Ninja Blade set

To clarify a point from Laucianna's post, a point of note is that unless HC has changed the credit code fairly recently, it's also worth noting that if you're in the open world, to get credit towards a "kill" of most Giant Monsters (U'kon included), you need to be on a team that did at least 10% of the damage needed to defeat it. Furthermore, being on one of the teams in the League is NOT enough. Leagues don't actually provide any credit sharing. Your character must also be within range for the credit of the defeat (i.e., not coming back from the hospital or the like). This is the most likely explanation for why you would have less credit than runs, as basically any group that does a MSR is fighting U'kon (even if, in the chaos, he can be kind of hard to spot...or outright invisible if there are too many entities around him). Note that the rules are different, to at least some extent, if you join an instanced MSR, although I'm not 100% sure on whether/how they differ with regards to U'kon specifically.

Not that you shouldn't feel welcomed back, but bear in mind the only time the game has been yanked away is when it had official support...

I don't care how easy it is, it's a confusing, un-fun mess, believe I ran it 1 time and will never run it again (unless maybe if it gets made into an SSA-style arc like it clearly should've been).

Speaking of Bane Spiders and epic pools, either Shatter or Shatter Armor needs an alternate animation, so that they can have some more variety.

Yeah, but one of those is Aeon, and "an extra small breakfree every 10 minutes" is hardly worth that clustermess.

Man, don't I wish it were though...

I have an old school mod that changes the color of the enhancement screen on Praetorian characters to purple, but nothing that (should) influence the border colors, and it's not even the color I get defaulted to anyway. Plus, as noted, it also will change if I use /wdwload, but again, only to the one color that I set it to before using /wdwsave. Yeah, the colors themselves do, but I don't think being able to reset to default does. Or am I misunderstanding and you found it?

Because you have a double XP boost turned on, or not? Generally speaking, WTFs are programmed so that if you're below 50 you get and XP bonus equal to whatever would fill in five bubbles worth at your current level. If you have the double XP buff from the START vendor, this gets increased and you get 10 (meaning 1 level, or in practice, likely very slightly less, but enough to ding, regardless). But if you're earning influence, you need to have progressed halfway into that level's XP range to get the ding.

So as per title, I know there was a time, when the color of window borders (around chat, quickbar, etc), would default on new characters based on the type of character created. Heroes got blue, Villains got red, Praetorians got gold. Now, either due to fuddling around in options, or possibly just this got changed, but every character I create defaults to a sort of drab auburn. I can create a new default and save/restore it with /wdwsave and/wdwload, but I'd rather just have the old defaults. They were rather nice, and allowed for some distinct feeling between different characters. Is there a way to re-enable that option after I've apparently changed it? Or is it gone forever?

FWIW, on Stalkers, if Assassin's Strike misses while stealthed, the stealth doesn't break, and if it does hit, enemies still don't perceive you until it does (after which there's a very brief Terrorize effect to simulate that very same delayed reaction), so what the OP is suggesting, I think, isn't outside the bounds of things we've seen in game in-theory. That said, whether it would be non-trivial to implement whatever AS does on a wider scale, or whether that would be remotely something close to "balanced" is left as an exercise for the reader.

I mean, they also give less XP than other groups, in spite of their ability to self-heal and drag fights on.

As mentioned, use the pre-existing MARTy system to throttle the amount earned over time, which would cap the farmers but leave the players using AE normally unaffected.

Now imagine you're trying to use AE for its originally intended function of coming up with player-made story content that can serve as a reasonable alternative to playing the prewritten content. They nerfed the people trying to actually use it to share their stories, to punish farmers who, as you noted, aren't even punished.

As a point of note, those are examples of things that would trigger it yes, as would things like "hitting extreme efficiency in AE farms back during the game's original life", as people did report hitting it fairly regularly. Furthermore, at least as I've had it explained to me by people running some of the other servers, MARTy can be set and adapted as seen fit. It's not a case of "it only works at value [x]", it's adjustable. And that fits, since in our current system with it off, and with rewards nerfed, farming is still a bigger thing than it was in the days before.

Probably around the same place they go with it as it applies to characters: "We're gonna tell you not to as a CYA, but it's not something GMs are gonna take action on."

AE's gone into a feedback loop. Farmers use it to get XP/inf at rates the devs find unacceptable, so the devs nerf rewards, so people who would use it for alternative access use it less, but farmers still pull in more than would come from "normal" content, so devs nerfs rewards harder, etc, etc. I still don't understand why they don't just return rewards to normal but turn MARTy back on.