Yomo Kimyata

Valid observations and questions, and I appreciate your posting them. This was partly a way for me to learn more about the flashback system, partly a way to interact with the community, partly a search for an interesting challenge that I can complete with no rewards without getting bored enough to stop, partly a spiteful snapback to people who complain how difficult it is to walk across the street and kvetch about why they aren't getting greater rewards to do so. I'm a puzzle solver by nature, so the question is not "what will enable me to run without enhancements?' but "what will most easily allow me to run without enhancements while keeping me engaged?" I'm also torn between trying something I can learn more about, like a beast/marine mastermind, or doubling down on something like a kinetic melee/willpower brute which will be godly after the inevitable buffs.

It's nice to see someone talking about balance. Admittedly, it's difficult to balance across ATs through regular play as well as endgame god play. It's also difficult to compare across ATs unless they share similarities (scrapper/brute/tanker, defender/corruptor). I don't think that ATOs should be considered mandatory (who said that?!?) for either regular or endgame play, and thematically I'd like it if they either did more of what makes the base AT great, or compensated for their great weaknesses. That said, I'd wield the nerf bat a lot more than the buff bat, but that should come as no surprise to long-time listeners.

That's useful terminology, thank you. I'm guessing that buffed and debuffed each can be done on just about any character, albeit slowly. No insp, probably as well, but no enhancement would need to be a specific build and possibly specific ATs/primaries/secondaries. I'm envisaging running 15-50, and probably focusing on one or two specific enemy groups for the lolz. The idea of doing every contact and every mission seems tedious to me, but then again I'm not undead.

Here's my concept: once a character gets to lvl 15, he moves into Ouroboros/his mother's basement and spends the rest of the game doing solo flashback missions with the same challenge settings for every mission. Clearly I will eventually get all the flashback badges, but I mainly want to make sure that every mission has an external challenge setting so that I get used to setting it before every mission. I'd like your thoughts and or personal experience with these: 1. Players are Debuffed. This seems doable. At first glance, the debuffs seems to be -50% accuracy and -50% damage. Anything else I'm missing? 2. Enemies are Buffed. I'm not sure how this translates, and I'll probably get the power analyzer out at some point, but if anyone knows offhand on exactly what this means? 3. AT Powers only. I'm assuming that this excludes pool and epic powers, so that would put a big crimp in survivability? 4. No travel powers. This seems trivial, yes? 5. No temp powers. Seems pretty easy, but there are probably a lot of temp powers I'd have to give up that I don't even realize are temp powers. Like Reveal? 6. No inspirations. This actually seems like one of the hardest. 7. No enhancements. I'd think this impossible, but then again I was on a Lady Grey TF the other day and realized halfway through that my scrapper had almost nothing slotted since it was an alternate build I hadn't built out yet. But solo means I'm not getting buffed by anyone else. Any relevant thoughts or experience?

I seem to recall that people bitched about this all the time, and I get that because it sucks to get drained. I don't have the least problem with sappers, literally, since there is only ever one per spawn and a sapper can't drain me if 1. they can't hit me and/or 2. they are already dead. The part that mystified me was when people were willing to burn down the castle over resistance to regeneration debuffs. I don't think I've ever been defeated because my regeneration rate was debuffed from 200% to 100%, or even 500% to 250% but I've been defeated a bunch when a hit got through my defenses/resistances. That's how I played high end regen -- a series of (hopefully) well timed oh shit buttons. Also, I'd be far more concerned with healing debuffs than regeneration debuffs (and those are two different things, although the healing one has a negative sign to it). Absolutely, but it is pretty easy to get to 50-100% slow debuff protection through enhancements and set bonuses. No real need to make that an inherent part of the power set, imo.

I haven't had the time or inclination to start up a new regen, and my mindset is definitely biased by how I was able to make old regen work like a well-oiled machine, but my thoughts right now are: Fast Healing -- skippable. Regeneration is always nice, and the new resistance to regeneration debuff is also nice, but I often find better places to use a power slot. Reconstruction -- absolutely not skippable. Core power. Quick Recovery -- skippable. Lots of ways to manage your endurance nowadays, although endurance debuff resistance is nice. If that number were higher, like 50%, I might have to reconsider skippability. Ailment Resistance -- absolutely not skippable. This is a do-everything power now for one slot. Integration -- absolutely not skippable. You need your mez resistance. Resilience -- not skippable. This is a rinky dink power, but you need resistance. Instant Healing/Reactive Regeneration -- skippable/not skippable. Too late Mom, the mob has spoken. In old regen, I always put in Instant Healing as a pro-active oh shit button for very little slot cost. Reactive Regeneration brings back immortal mode so you don't need an oh shit button anymore. Second Wind -- technically skippable, but why would you? Like Ailment Resistance and Reactive Regeneration, this has become a magic do-everything power now. Moment of Glory -- classic oh shit button. Regeneration does not seem to need an oh shit button anymore. I'd still keep it, but I'd want to level up a new character to see if it's necessary.

I've got only one character out of hundreds with this power (and I respecced out of it recently), but this seems like an etiquette being enforced from someone who doesn't have it and wants this behavior from someone who does. It takes me no more than twice to figure out that someone has fold space, and it doesn't take me much longer to figure out who it is. Generally, at that point I just start following that person around because: 1. I know there is very close to a zero percent chance if I ask them to NOT use it or to announce it every minute or two before using it that there will be compliance; and 2. How much longer am I really going to be on a team with this person? It's not like we're married and have to communicate about things that annoy us about the other. That's just my approach, partly because I don't love needless conflict, and mainly because I'm probably not going to be able to influence a complete stranger's gameplay because it's something I personally find annoying. It's not much of a problem, and it's one of short duration.

I never claimed no fleas were harmed in the *reading* of the post.

I had that same question not that long ago. I think that since the prohibition is based on consent of the owner/resident, a court order does not allow vampire policemen to enter. I also believe that if a person is made into a vampire, they are allowed entrance into any household they were considered a part of beforehand without post-conversion permission.

Going back to the title of this thread, I think Flea should go knock themself back. No fleas were harmed in the writing of this post. They are essentially immune to knockback due to their exoskeleton and size.

I'm going to try to address the issue again, foolish me! Kinetic Melee has three basic things that categorize it as a distinct set, to me. 1. Many/most of its attacks provide damage mitigation in terms of -damage for a short period of time. I believe that when the set was designed, there was a conscious effort to reduce damage inflicted when compared to similar sets that do not also provide damage mitigation. Fair enough, makes sense to me. 2. Many/most of its attacks are back loaded. This isn't just that they are long animations (like Radiation Melee, Kinetic Melee has some slow attacks and some fast attacks) but that the animation time before effect tends to be close to total animation time. As a result, you queue up a three second attack, and two and a half seconds later your attack takes effect. Some of this is psychological (people seem to really want to have effects after half a second rather than after two and a half seconds, even if they are rooted for three seconds regardless) and some of this is having your target defeated between the time you activated the attack but before it takes effect. This was an interesting style choice that I find truly annoying. 3. Concentrate has different mechanics than Build Up, and I'll leave that to you to figure out if that's better or worse than Build Up. (Stalker/Scrapper only) Getting a critical strike on Concentrated Strike doesn't do extra damage, but instantly recharges Concentrate. This only works on Scrappers and Stalkers because Brutes and Tankers don't get critical hits. Annoyingly, the scrapper ATO procs have no effect on the critical rates of Concentrated Strike, which is a crying shame since otherwise you could make an interesting critical monster. Most of the complaints are about point 1, which is that the set doesn't do enough damage in comparison to others, but I suspect that a lot of people who have really played the set are pretty bummed out by the second point as well.

I had assumed it had something to do with the rabies.

Ok, I'm a few missions in on my Staff/Bio scrapper at +4/x8, and here are some of my scrapper-related thoughts. Thanks to the Traitors, this is a tough slog for any melee secondary set without a fair amount of defense debuff resistance. Every mob will debuff you, and they also reinforce each other both defensively and by providing resistance to mez effects and knockdown/back. Martial arts/Invulnerability, even with the recent boost in defense debuff resistance, is going to be tough simply because MA is predominantly single target, and in order to survive each group you need to take out as many enemies as possible as quickly as possible, since a minion is going to debuff you as much as a boss will. The teleporting Surgeons are annoying, but not as much of a problem as I had assumed they would be -- they tend to get right up into melee range a lot so AoEs take them out pretty quickly. What I did not expect or like were the traitors who turn into or otherwise spawn nicti, mainly because once they spawn, rather than go back to their original spawn point if you are defeated, they camp your body. My M.O. here has been to make a targeting macro to hunt out the surgeons and to start combat with a slow snipe from my epic pool (Moonbeam). There seem to be two surgeons per spawn, and if I draw the whole group, I'll break line of sight, pop Shadow Meld before they converge on me, then I go to town on all the minions and lts. Once they are out, I'll focus on the spawned nicti, then finally the bosses. Between Shadow Meld and various heals, I'm usually ok but sometimes things go sideways. Ageless Radial helps with providing some defense debuff resistance, but you really need to be proactive and pop it before you need it. So far, that's the main issue. The Ravenna Conclave and the EBs don't feel like any sort of a threat in comparison. I haven't gotten to the AVs at the end of the arc yet, so I'll check them out later today!

Learning something new each day, thanks team HC! Tidge hit my feelings pretty well:

Can I do both?

This is why we pay him the big Oklahomabux. Great idea.

This is the beauty of this game! There are fifteen different blast sets, and if you like one, you can play it. You can play the hell out of it! And if you don't like one, you can not play it. You can not play the hell out of it! What I do not accept is someone not liking a set then calling for a mandate on how it must be changed. Knockback is a bit of a sticky wicket, I admit, since it can adversely affect people other than the user. Hold on a sec, I see a cloud formation that I do not like the looks of, gotta go yell at it, bbl.

I've got the solution! Lock all KB powers so that you cannot access them at all until you have unlocked a level 50. Using the VEAT requirements adds a level of aptness, since so many hate the kb of peacebringers.

I know this goes against the cardinal rule of never ever judging someone else on their abilities or game play choice, but aren't you saying that knockback is bad because bad players are bad? Bad players are, in fact, bad, and I'm not planning on changing the game in order to somehow work around that fact. Hate the player, not the knockback! Also, being a bad player doesn't necessarily mean that they are physiologically mentally undeveloped as one person said or that they should be compared to a toddler as you said. It just means they are bad by my standards, and that badness is easily remediable by practicing not being bad. No bad players were hurt in the writing of this post.

If we made everything free, then no one would have to farm and then we could use Pocket D for its intended purpose -- awkward sexual overtone chats. I am somewhere between 5.0% and 95.0% serious on this.

For me, the answer to something like this is scrappers. It's always scrappers. I've been able to play every scrapper I've gotten to 50 through a series of +4/x8 content solo, and some are markedly easier than others. I've not run that arc in recent memory. The problem I always run into with Cim content is that every minion has defense debuff powers and resistance to mez (through boss shouts), so blindly setting +4/x8 and running through pell mell is a recipe for disaster. Also, very few of my preferred armor types have much or even any def debuff resistance. That said, I think my staff/bio scrapper could do well with something like this; I'll check it out.

The Praetorian ones bother me a lot. Before I knew much about game mechanics, fighting Anti-Matter's Clockwork was brutal for my broadsword/invulnerability scrapper. I'm getting swarmed by dozens of menial laborers named things like "Vacuum" and "Scrub" who each hit me with ranged (not high ranged defense) energy (not high energy resistance) attacks that debuff my defense. I'm being destroyed by, literally, a bunch of scrubs.

I seem to recall there is a limit to the number of story arcs you can have running at the same time. At one time it was three but that might be from a decade ago.

Enchanted or not?

You first set your eyes on sweet Molly Mu'Lone.