Yomo Kimyata

What year are we in? You there, what year is this? 2010? IT WORKED!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA

I'm going with Doc Buzzsaw

A three-legged dire wolf walked into a bar and said, "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."

For the most part, the new folks are lovely. However, there does seem to be a significantly higher percentage of them who strike me as an AI answer to the request "Design an MMO player as if they were the child of Dunning and Kruger, and then were abandoned by their parents and left to be raised by a pack of 4chan."

I feel that anything outside, i.e., not in a mission instance, is fair game. If someone is running away, I'd feel free to eliminate their pursuit and not think twice about it. The ONLY exception would be if they were fighting an enemy group that they may be fighting for a mission (defeat xx circle of thorns) and that group is difficult to find in the particular zone you are in. Example: Carnies in Peregrine Island. At level 11, that's probably not going to be the case, unless it's Lost in Kings Row. I hate to bring this up, but kvetchers are gonna kvetch. Some people really hate the visuals of some of the buffs, and the default armor from cold domination can be pretty ugly. If The Wife is really concerned about not bugging anyone, she might want to go to a trainer or Icon and change the visuals for her buffs to something as inobtrusive as possible. I've been yelled at in the past for not doing this, which is frankly madness, but I thought I would pass it on.

You should cut the mohel jokes!

How much do you need?

I've now spent a handful of +4/x8 lvl 50 paper missions on both the new Council and the new CoT with two of my better built incarnates, and I'll cut and paste this in both subforums. Overall, change is good! Council are a bit tougher, harder to clear out, slower clear speeds. They don't seem to change my strategy at all, but do make the experience a bit more challenging. CoT are a different animal. On the one hand, I didn't notice getting my to hit debuffed down to single digits which happens currently when you get a handful of Death Mages stacking on you. On the other hand, I got my clock cleaned repeatedly out of nowhere. Guess I will have to do my research on which new enemies are the "kill first" and treat them like the DA Banished Pantheon (set targetname macro to "sorrow"). Two overall points: I tend to avoid CoT missions in general, both paper/radio and story arcs, because of cave maps and especially Oregano maps. This gives me (and others) additional incentive to avoid this missions. I'm not complaining about a higher difficulty gradient, not at all. But it's a very big shift for an enemy group that was already avoided. I think that the devs should be cognizant that adding challenge at 36+ or 41+ really disproportionally affects sub-50 characters and encourages players to jump up to 50 asap. We really saw this with the Crey revamp. I'd consider shifting some of the challenge that would apply to sub-50 to 50+ content. My two cents.

I've now spent a handful of +4/x8 lvl 50 paper missions on both the new Council and the new CoT with two of my better built incarnates, and I'll cut and paste this in both subforums. Overall, change is good! Council are a bit tougher, harder to clear out, slower clear speeds. They don't seem to change my strategy at all, but do make the experience a bit more challenging. CoT are a different animal. On the one hand, I didn't notice getting my to hit debuffed down to single digits which happens currently when you get a handful of Death Mages stacking on you. On the other hand, I got my clock cleaned repeatedly out of nowhere. Guess I will have to do my research on which new enemies are the "kill first" and treat them like the DA Banished Pantheon (set targetname macro to "sorrow"). Two overall points: I tend to avoid CoT missions in general, both paper/radio and story arcs, because of cave maps and especially Oregano maps. This gives me (and others) additional incentive to avoid this missions. I'm not complaining about a higher difficulty gradient, not at all. But it's a very big shift for an enemy group that was already avoided. I think that the devs should be cognizant that adding challenge at 36+ or 41+ really disproportionally affects sub-50 characters and encourages players to jump up to 50 asap. We really saw this with the Crey revamp. I'd consider shifting some of the challenge that would apply to sub-50 to 50+ content. My two cents.

I've mentioned this before, but I usually pick up Kick over Boxing from the Fighting pool, and I like to single slot it with the FF +recharge. It's certainly a waste of a million+ in inf, but when I use Kick to knock off the last sliver of a tough boss and the proc activates, it's like finding money in a pair of pants you haven't worn in a while. Nice little rush!

I'm generally of the mindset that 1. more recharge is always better, but 2. I'm not going to be chasing for specific numbers to achieve perma-anything or really short attack chains. I generally can find something else to do for the 0.23 seconds I have to wait. The proc is 2PPM, it does last for 5 seconds, it does not stack (although I think Mids might still show it as stacking) and a fresh application resets the timer to 5 seconds. Since this is a proc that affects you and not the target, putting it in an AoE is much more effective than putting it in a single target attack. If you attack 5 enemies, it has a chance to proc on each one of those enemies, and so your overall % chance of activation can be over 90%. In practice, I will always put it in AoEs that take it, but I usually won't slot more than two in a build. For Battle Axe there are three Aoes that will take it, but I'll skip putting it in Cleave.

I just picked up Out of Control Rod on two servers for staff/rad (scrapper and stalker).

My criteria change over time. I really enjoy pulling out an old 50 and say to myself, "What the hell was I thinking back then?!?" I don't mind doing respecs so if something seems off I'll fix it as soon as I see something wrong. My first focus is always going to be endurance, and if I need more I'll move heaven and earth for it. It's funny you mention stamina, because I think I only have one character with 3-slotted stamina and that's a war mace//dark armor. I'm probably always overslotted with accuracy, because there are -to hit debuffs out there.

Is it privilege if anyone can do it?

I love Ice Melee on scrappers. Thanks to Ice Patch it adds an incredible amount of mitigation that lets you focus on doing damage. I really do not like the ice (or fire) sword animations, but with ice melee it's not a deal breaker to take Frozen Fists over Ice Sword, and a lot of people end up skipping Greater Ice Sword as well. I find that FF or Ice Sword, Frost, Freezing Touch, Frozen Aura are sufficient for attacks, although it is really nice to be able to get some additional offensive from your secondary/pool/epics. I've run Ice/Radiation, Ice/Bio, and Ice/Stone on scrappers to 50, and I'd rank them in that order. At 50 and well equipped, the first two are pretty godly.

Toot-toot mother-[AIR HORN BLOWS]

I neglected to mention something before. I realize that a lot of new people are joining/returning and starting a bunch of alts. This is normally wonderful and frankly the primary reason I play this game. However, one is probably best served by getting your first character to 50 first before engaging in altitis or else you will have the same funding problem on all your alts at the same time.

I like my vampires like I like my undercover cops: staked out

Great responses so far! Some things I would add: "Proc-friendly" can mean both "there are a lot of useful procs that can be slotted" or "this power will generally activate the proc each time you use it." "Useful" may be in the eye of the beholder. Different enhancements may have different proc rates, in terms of PPM. The standard is 3.5, but some are higher or lower. Any proc in an ATO or a Winter set that is made Superior with a Catalyst has a higher PPM. Powers that can affect more than one target can have a greater than 90% chance of activating. What?!? But the cap is 90%?!?. This is because if a proc does NOT activate on any particular target, there is a chance for it to activate on a subsequent target. For example, let's say you attack a single target with a power that has a 50% chance to hit and to proc. Half the time it will activate and half the time it will not. Now let's say you attack five targets that are in range with this power. For a proc that affects the target, like a damage proc, each target will have a 50% chance to take damage. But if the proc is something that affects you, like %chance for recharge, then the only way it will NOT activate is if it does not activate on all five targets. In this case, it would NOT activate 0.5 ^ 5 = 3.125% of the time, meaning that it WOULD activate 96.875% of the time. (Sadly, it does not have the chance to stack five times.) In general, I like to proc powers when I feel that there is a "good" chance for activation, or when I have a spare slot and nothing better to use it on. Sometimes you get a lottery pick proc activation!

And by "most people" I mean @tidge.

Not updating the thread, but I wanted this image to come up when I post it in other threads.

Try this:

Are YOU even a live person?