Lazarillo

Finished tweaking and re-published an old arc I did back in the day. Would love if anyone has any sort of feedback on it, or just wants to enjoy some lowbie villainousness (or Rogueishness? I actually flagged it as Rogue since I could only pick one, and it's somewhat...mercenary, more than evil). It ties to the end of the Hollows arc/Cavern of Transcendence Trial, so you'll probably get more out of it if you're familiar with those, but I tried to make it clear enough without having played them.

It's almost...gratifying that this server is big enough that even the Chinese Gold Farmers are starting to take note. Mostly annoying. But almost gratifying.

What is the uptime on Noxious Gas, anyway? There aren't any numbers for it at all.

In fairness, I'm not sure either of those really violate the cottage rule. Both powers fully retained their original effects, they simply applied them differently; instant healing went from a toggle to a click, but was still about making sure that you, well, healed instantly when you took a hit. Energy Transfer had its animation time increased, but simply went from dealing self damage in order to have the best DPA of any melee attack in the game to...dealing self damage in order to have the best DPA (if less) of any melee attack in the game. Cottage rule means changing the way a power works entirely. Nerfing a power does not violate it.

Then just "a second ranged attack identical to the first one with the same endurance, recharge, and relative damage values as the melee attack"?

I've seen some players who treat it as both. Can't speak to whole SGs, but "I took a time portal to 7 years in the future and...no time passed. What happened to the world that caused it suddenly to blink out and them come back?" seems to be the basis for a lot of bios, at least.

That's the thing. I'm doing that on my Fortunata, too. Fortunata durations for Total Domination are about the same as Dominator base, and Mass Confusion is equivalent to Dominators with Domination up Rarely is the extra mag needed, and for the few it is, just toss a single-target on that one exception. Don't get me wrong, I like Mind Control, conceptually, but I really don't see anything that it can do that a Fortunata can't.

They get the mez protection aspect, and I'm not sure that Domination makes up for better defenses, team buffs, and a freaking nuke. I'm not too sure Mind Control needs a pet either (though I'm not especially fond of pet powers on Dominators in general, so I may be biased). But I feel like it needs something (although...maybe that "something" is "better secondaries"?).

The roughest thing about Mind Control at this point, especially for Dominators, IMO, is that most of its nicest powers are also given to Fortunatas.

Anything still going on with this? I had to miss a few weeks due to travel (and just being kinda burned out at one point), but last couple times I've come to "meet" I haven't seen anyone. Everyone else just get busy too?

My general take is that anything that's "balanced" by me running and getting a refill isn't really balanced anyway. That said, I'm just as happy with them not doing anything to make most of the t9s in defense sets remotely desirable to my playstyle. Just frees up a power pick.

Thanks. I'll just stick to Batzul for now, then. It's pretty close, if not perfect (it also doesn't seem to respect "put this in the front/back!" settings for certain objectives, and it still feels better than the generic cave I used before.

I had an arc back in the day based around a sort of epilogue/villainous complement to the Hollows stuff heroside, and I found the file and wanted to put it back up. However, I've noticed that several maps have been added since the days I originally made the arc and have been twinking it. If I can get the actual Cavern of Transcendence map, that'd be awesome! ...but I can't find it on the list. Just in case, though, does anyone know if it's available, and if so, what it's under? (I'll prolly use the Bat'zul map as a backup, since they're similar, but I'd really like to use the CoT).

The problem with minimum-1 trials is that it makes it so individual players can't use the LFG system to, well, LFG.

Yeah, that's all pretty reasonable. I'll just keep holding out hope that a good compromise is found (or that I can think of I can recommend to you to be summarily denied? 😜 )

As a question on this...will anything be done to make the power swapped to t2...more desirable? I mean, it's nice that Tanks don't have to pick the powers that tend to be weakest among their peers in a lot of cases, but it'd be even nicer if those powers got a little more love in the first place (this isn't just a Tank thing; it seems like almost every melee set, the t1 power becomes undesirable once you get higher-enough to make a chain without it).

Thanks guys. I thought maybe I was just legit starting to have senior moments. So yeah, allow me to continue to welcome our new Rage overlords.

Are you absolutely sure about that? Because maybe I'm indeed remembering wrong, after 7 years, but as I mentioned to Haijinx, I distinctly recall having to deal with crashes even on my characters where I attempted to have Perma-Ragers. Not as punitive a crash, but a crash nonetheless. I also recall that the current non-Beta-HC crash was introduced by the original devs anyway...

In general, the genie's pretty well out of the bottle on shutting down private servers as a whole, as the code in general was leaked out to the public (heck, it's even possible to run a personal server at this point). HC has sort of the double-edged sword of being both the biggest platform for players to re-experience the game, but also is therefore painting the biggest target on themselves. They are trying to go legit, but it's not impossible that things will go belly-up on that front, as, well, if NCSoft were reasonable and predictable, the situation would likely never have been needed anyway. That all said, I feel like my characters on Homecoming are "safe" from any fate more terrible than me going "eh, screw it" and hitting the delete button. I'm having some real fun with the game, and encourage you to do the same!

I dunno, maybe that has something to do with it. I just know that the worst part of the Rage crash for me was always the "you do zero damage" part, which, IIRC, was the case even if the buff was multi-stacked. I definitely remember giving up every SS character I ever played due to frustration at Rage back in the day...but this change has me absolutely ecstatic to dust off some of those old concepts.

Maybe I'm the dumbest of all, because I really can't understand your reasoning. Can you break it down a bit, because here's what's got me confounded: -Current Rage - Will crash, no matter what. You can double stack it, but you'll have that many more crashes to worry about. When crashed, you lose all your damage and about 40% of your mitigation. -Beta Rage - Will crash the same as you have been previously only if you use it like you have been previously. If you don't activate it while the big red "don't push me" button isn't on it, it won't crash ever. When crashed, you lose all your damage and about 40% of your mitigation (though some of that mitigation has been moved from Defense to Resistance). It seems to me like if you're unhappy with the way Rage works now, then you don't have to use it that way and get a buff from it, and if you're happy with the way it works right now, then nothing is changing in terms of how you have to use it. I truly, honestly, feel like I must be missing something, because I legit don't see how this isn't a straight buff.

Probably the same as he mentioned about Foot Stomp. Since the buff only applies to stuff of range 10 or less, the base number was nerfed so that that the buff can, well, buff it (as it will thus now be 20 feet).

I believe Powerhouse said the extended range came from the changes to the Tanker inherent, rather than to the powers themselves, so it won't show up in the creation screen.

And that's what I get for saying "I haven't played anything with Rage yet, and thus don't think it'd be helpful if I participate in the testing". Sounds like they already thought of my idea (if in reverse).

Random Thought: can Rage perhaps get the "colorful ring" treatment when it's not active so that you know it's "safe" to use again? Keeps people from having to squint at their buffs to be sure.