Lazarillo

The best Resistance-speak in the game has gotta come from the one Maria Jenkins' mission to go bust the Primal Scanner that they stole: "Hey! Finders keepers, scamper! Now you're getting two pounds of slambang for sneakin'! That's right. TWO pounds. Went from zero to - boooom! - TWO!" I don't know why but that always makes me laugh.

I think the problem is the "you can increase encounter time but not increase difficulty" part, 'cause that's essentially what happens with Nemesis soldiers. You end up with one or two guys who have so much stacked Vengeance that you can't hit them, but their own damage and ability to hamper you is so poor, you might as well just go fight the next set of enemies and ignore them completely. Or if you're on a defeat all, just alt-tab for a couple minutes. When the best solution to an in-game problem is not tread carefully, but rather to just stop playing the game, well, that's just not very inspiring. Nemesis aren't the only ones who have this problem, for what it's worth, either. Power-pattern Paragon Protectors having two minutes of "ignore them, it's MoG", Arachnos Tarantula Mistresses having an undodgeable, unremovable "you cannot see anything for 1 minute" debuff (the other half of which is a massive defense hit that is more in line with what they should be able to do), or even, coming back to Nemesis, the tendency of the fakes to just sit there with their "can't attack, can't be attacked" shield. What's the point? It's not adding challenge if you're doing nothing for a minute, then just instantly getting what you'd have had one minute ago if not for the shield the moment it expires.

HC has already "broadened" the Kheldian lore a bit anyway by expanding the origins that can be used with them (same with VEATs, granted). And honestly, it always seemed kinda weird that Kheldians were missing from Praetoria when they'd been around in Primal Earth for hundreds if not thousands of years. Did Cole just tell 'em all to bugger off when he took over?

Incarnates are weird little conundrum. You don't want to trivialize content, but at the same time, it should feel like a danged good return on investment and we shouldn't be seeing everyone and their brother getting "the power of the gods", or what have you. I don't think anything that's currently part of the system should be removed, but I definitely don't think it should be expanded without a very, very, very clear plan of how it's going to be applied and what will be the content it's designed for. The only category I could maybe dig some expansion of is Lore, but that's already pretty...varied. It might be interesting to add a "No Incarnate Powers" limitation to Ouroboros/Task Forces, and make the various "Master of..." badges require that box be checked, too. Of course, I say that as someone who doesn't do the classic "Master of..." badges on principle anyway and thinks those should all be overhauled, so my take probably doesn't count for much. As for which slots I like, I tend to prefer things that always benefit me. So Alpha, of course, is the nicest, Destiny can be if/when I can get the right high tier stuff, and Interface and Hybrid are both just things I see as small passive buffs (I do toggle my Hybrids on fairly regularly, but honestly, I can't tell the difference when I use them most of the time). Judgment is fun, but mostly just a gimmick due to the extra-long Recharge, and Lore, well, it's highly specialized but again, too limited to be something I really think about when I'm tweaking my characters. Plus, my OCD/anal retentiveness dislikes only being able to summon generic minions, but they have to be two different ones.

People talk about hard versus easy, but frankly, I don't think the Vengeance stacking makes things any harder...just more of a time sink. I actually do think it should be removed, but as part of a greater overhaul to make the Nemesis faction harder overall, because on the whole, even if the defense buffs make them take forever to beat, they're actually too damn easy, and too damn simple. Limit Vengeance to a single stack (or make it only effect the mob the LT spawns in, kinda like Rikti buffs), but give the LTs a wider variety of Leadership buffs in the first place. Give them "steam gunners" that can use Water Blast powers from their weapons (or if that's too hard, use the normal animations but say they've got steam projectors strapped to their wrists, maybe?). Make Warhulks not just explode but leave behind a massive Burn patch. Include some Traps, and some Trick Arrows... Nemesis is such a cool villain, but yeah, let's make his army feel like an actual army to fight, not a bunch of helpless mooks who can't hurt you while you leave your seat to go refill your drink.

I wonder about that, actually. I see so many bios demons out to destroy the world, and such, hanging out in Atlas Park...

Here's the thing: I'll do Synapse, because it's a decent low-level romp, even if it's a bit tedious, and the Accolade reward is nice. I'll even do Dr. Q, because at least the Shard is an intriguing setting. I did Barracuda once, for the badge, and I feel dirty enough just for doing that. I'm never doing it again. It's just freaking awful. I'm not fond of Kahn either; Mary Sue Bison is a terrible villain, and his "return" to the game was awful any way it got sliced (thank goodness for Max, even if it never got followed up on, not to mention being something a lot of players might miss), but Barracuda also has the terrible final mission that throws the whole "play what way you like" premise that every single other mission and TF in the game is founded on, and on top of that, has the horrible "we're going to cave and come up with why you're now an Arbiter even though it makes no sense" plot element added on. Crap mission with a crap story. Easily the bottom of the barrel.

Let us drown our sorrows in the satisfaction of our altoholism! I believe at least at first, there was a damage component, 'cause I recall (though it's been a long time, granted), that MMs were having trouble getting rewards in the early days of the Incarnate Trial grind. I also recall it was changed based on the initial troubles but after (and before) that they didn't explain what the requirements themselves were, presumably to keep people from creating liabilities by trying to raise their participation numbers. I wonder if anyone's try testing it out and just afk-ed through Trials on the current servers to see what would happen. Yeah, I was aware of the trial merit limits. It's the weird imbalance in drops that I keep running into at Hammy raids that's making me wonder. Again, could be just really weird luck, though. Good to know. Not that I'm inclined to leech anyway, but it's nice to have a full picture.

Just curious on some things, one about some old stuff I recall, another about stuff I'm presently noticing. First, I recall back in the day, there were "participation" mechanics/thresholds on Incarnate trials, that would weigh (but not guarantee) getting certain tiers of salvage tables at the end. Not completely unjustifiably, the old devs were a little mum on the nature of what these mechanics were and how much they played into things. Given that (a)HC has made some changes regarding reward tables and where they appear anyway, and (b)the code is presumably, a little less closely guarded these days, I'm just curious if there are any more specifics now regarding these mechanics, or whether they're even still in play. And if they are, where exactly do they apply. If I'm soloing a Dark Astoria arc, for example, one would think I should weight pretty highly on the "participation" requirements, but they may not even be in place. Second, is there a limit on the amount of dropped rewards that can be obtained within a certain time period. Particularly, is there some mechanic to limit the number of Incarnate Shards? Comparatively, I know that Enhancement Catalysts only drop once per character per day. I've also observed on Hamidon raids that the Mitochondria seem to have a very high chance of dropping Shards, and I can easily end up getting 5-6 in a single raid...during the first half of the "double header" runs that are frequently done. An immediate jump back in the jello results in maybe 1-2 Incarnate Shards, if any at all. To that end, I'm kinda wondering if getting a certain number within a certain period time puts the rewards into some sort of cooldown mode. It could be just a matter of bizarre luck, but I've seen it happening repeatedly, so I've started to get pretty suspicious. If there is a limit, what is it? Is it also per day? Per hour? Do the chances drop all the way to 0, or simply reduce significantly?

Ironically, there's a patch on the beta server to remove the incorrect text as of today.

The "Lazarillo" character who shares my namesake was originally inspired by a P&P RPG character I made, who was, in turn, inspired by Kisuke Urahara from the manga series Bleach. That said, there's not really any resemblance between the characters at all, since the P&P character was designed around 2004-ish, long before a lot of the inspiring character's major character development/revelations. And the transition of my own character has also been...significant. But way, way, way back in the day, that's where the seed was technically planted.

I'm really interested to see what's on the other side of fixing Interface. Like, it's clearly going to be better from a numbers standpoint, but I'm legit curious to see if it feels any different.

I'm not a big fan of Fury, I'd typically rather play a Scrapper, typically. The latest big patch helped with that a lot, though. Now we just need the Rage fix to be un-undone!

In addition to what HelBlaiz mentioned, you can see him starting to turn in the 30-39 range Vigilante mission, for what it's worth. His lawyer gets him off on a technicality and you go beat him up and he basically just lets you do it, because he's started to realize that he "doesn't deserve" to get off for his crimes.

They are committed to the whole "let's make life as miserable as possible for as many people as possible" lifestyle, after all.

Ahh, my apologies. Per my previous post at the time, I had been under the impression that Light Form, despite not being a "form" per se, locked out the other transformations (I feel like this was at least a thing at one point, but maybe I just heard wrong). So since your post seemed along the lines of explaining what Dwarf could do that Light Form could not, I misinterpreted. Thanks for clarifying, I appreciate it.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this seems to be indicating that I am, in fact, better off more or less disregarding Light Form and just sticking to Dwarf when I ohcrap?

Ah, sorry if I was unclear, I am aware Light Form is not a "form", though I was under the impression it did lock out shapeshifting while active. With that being the case, and also the crash aspect, I figgered going for a build with Dwarf for "turtling" could kinda render Light Form moot. I'll take a look. Been hard finding stuff that's clearly marked, but it is appreciated. Most builds seem a little off from what I'm looking for (which may mean what I'm looking for is not viable, but I haven't been able to clearly confirm that either...absence of evidence not being evidence of absence, and all that), which is part of the reason I'm feelin' pretty lost.

Never played Peacebringer very much in the old days, but I've got a real hankering to go back and do one now so that I can play through Sunstorm's arcs, especially. However, holy crap it feels like building an effective PB is complicated. So I'm looking for maybe a build that, even if it's not exactly what I want, is something I can tweak effectively into something that suits my playstyle. I've got a few things I really want to lean towards, though, so a few qualifiers: I want to do either Human-only, or Human/Dwarf. Nova's movement is always too "floaty" for me anyway, and I figure having that many more powers to slot just makes things harder. If Human-only, I'd like to get Light Form permanent. If Human/Dwarf, I'd just as soon skip Light Form anyway and take advantage of shapeshifting to be more adaptable. If at all possible, I'm looking for something that works while leveling and at max, rather than requiring respecs every 10-20 levels. As noted, I'm planning on spending a lot of time with Sunstorm, which probably means a fair amount of time solo, so I need to be relatively self-sufficient. However, I'm certainly not ruling out running with others, either, particularly if I run out of "story" missions. In the interest of sparing my teammates, keeping knockback to a minimum, particularly with regards to AoEs, would be nice. Finally, money is not an option. I...have been saving up. Given the lack of budget limits, can anyone point me in the right direction?

Honestly, the "continuity" in this game was screwed up so damn hard in the last couple of Issues that were released in the old days that there's probably not much need for consistency. States and Psyche both are just way more "iconic" than Pitstop and nobody, and the LRSF should be nothing if not iconic.

That is correct. I assume it's to ensure that the damage components have the same "stacking" limitation as the debuffs and control effects do (one-and-done damage effects couldn't be limited the same way and thus I'd imagine would get exponentially more damaging on teams). Sorry, I don't have it handy, and it could be that what I read is wrong, too. I try to keep abreast of these things, but admit I don't have the patience to notate things 10k times to judge percentages and such, nor the the tech savvy to go datamining, so I could be misinformed. If so, my sincere apologies.

Cake, for what it's work, uses the same base that HC does, AFAIK. The other two main communities did stick to the i24 code, though. Of course, as development is done on both, that base may have sufficiently separated anyway. That all said, I think the HC folks have said in the past they're trying to avoid following the leads of some of the other communities, just because of the degree to which having them stir up drama of being "ripped off" or the like isn't worth it when there are other things they could do as well (and I don't blame them for not wanting to put themselves into that, frankly). That isn't to say HC can't/won't fill in from some of the incomplete stuff that's still hiding about the way the other servers did (like with Force of Will); it's not unthinkable stuff like Wind Control and the like might be completed. But I don't think we're going to see things carried over part and parcel, even from Cake, which uses the same code base.

Not a glitch precisely, but there's as an oversight/unintended limitation with Interface procs that include a DoT component. The DoT is programmed to "stop" if you miss your enemy, but the % chance for the DoT not triggering also counts as a "miss". This means the chances of the DoT kicking in are lower than they appear, and get lower for every tick. For an example, let's say you're using the a Very Rare tier Reactive Interface. If you use the Radial: You have a 75% chance for the first DoT to tick., a 75% chance of a 75% chance for the second (about 56%), then likewise 42% for the 3rd tick, 31% for the final tick. The -Res will have a 25% chance to kick in as long as the first tick happens so it's actually around an 18% chance. If you use the Core: You have a 75% chance for the -Res to tick, but connected to the math above, only an 18% chance for the first DoT. And then a 4% chance for the second tick, a 1% chance for the 3rd tick, and a less than 1% chance for all four damage ticks. Thus, the DoT component is basically nil for those sorts of Interface powers, if you go for Core, and can get even worse when you look at the Interface options that apply a DoT and a control effect. It's not a bug, because, strictly speaking, it's doing what it's meant to do, which is "not dealing damage when the hit roll fails". But it makes the power description quite misleading.

Let's see... A Beasts/Cold Mastermind named "Wendy Goe". Her real name. Parents deliberately tempted fate in a universe where people with conveniently punny names seem to end up with superpowers. She only eats people sometimes. A Beam/Devices Blaster named Mechan-8. Lab assistant to a mad scientist. Thought the designation was just a little joke, then found out what happened to Mechans 1-7 and quit the job to do hero rogue work instead.

Crap, this reminds me it makes two weeks in a row I forgot to come. Been getting distracted lately, I needta set an alarm, or something.