Yomo Kimyata

I, for one, welcome our new professional drama overlords.

That's what I was thinking too. Like a vanity pet that follows you around kowtowing for a minute or two so you can brag to your teammates.

In all seriousness, I usually slot one or more in my end game builds. Example 1: I don’t love the set bonuses for defense sets in general. If I’m trying to save slots for other powers, I’ll slot defense toggles with LotG recharge and 2x 53 Cytoplasms. Example 2: For scrappers and brutes I will split the ATO set that gives melee/s&l defense 3-3 (1/5/6 and 2/3/4 iirc). Adding a lvl 53 Nucleosis gets me where I want for accuracy and defense. Sure they’re spendy. But c’mon, you deserve nice things!

if there is one or more for offer and you haven’t bought it yet, you’re not bidding high enough!

Also, you can only slot one +5 A/D from a given set, but you can slot as many lvl 53 Nucleoses as you are willing to buy from me!

I've got a simpler one: replace Rage with Build Up.

Well, I find them great, because they work really well with how I like to play. If, for example, you are looking to max out defense debuff resistance and laugh at debuffers, then there are better alternatives.

I love crafting (and often playing) these kinds of builds, ones with serious constraints. If you asked me to make the most powerful and enjoyable melee alt, I'd freeze. But if you ask me to make one that can only use ranged attacks, I'd be happy as a clam and make one that can solo +4/x8 content.

I see this happen with Malta occasionally, and I attribute it to mez stacking. I'm about to embark on a tremendous anti-Carnival campaign with my Battle Axe/Energy Aura scrapper named The Coulrophobic Avenger, so I'll report back if I see the same thing.

As much as I consider the annoying visuals of Radiation Armor and Bio Armor as "annoyance taxes" because those two sets are just so good there has to be *some* way to discourage people from using them exclusively, I'd be pretty happy with a true minimal fx option on both of them.

For a defender, my first thought is something like this:

I'll bite. I'm assuming the restriction is only pool powers when you can take them, so only your first three powers come from your primary/secondary? I'm focusing on a build that should be able to solo 1-50 through "normal" content. Maybe not +4, but probably +3/x8. The hard part is finding four pools (and one ancillary) that you can take enough powers from! I went Fighting (for pretty obvious reasons), Leaping (for Combat Jumping and Acrobatics. It's been a dog's age since I took the latter but you need *some* mez mitigation. Spring Attack for an AoE -res debuff!), Medicine (self-heal, Injection as a single target debuffer), and Force of Will (mainly for Unleash Potential, but Weaken Resolve also as a single target debuffer). Soul Mastery for Gloom and -to hit debuff. The power selection order can certainly be optimized over this quick build, but I think it will get us where we are going. Slowly, of course.

Unless he is building specifically for PvP, his mez resist will be 10.something. Now I know absolutely nothing about PvP, but one thing I've been playing around with on scrappers is the single target hold in some of the epic pools. If you slot Soul Storm, for example, with 2x lvl 50 Endoplasms, a lvl 50 recharge IO, Devastation proc, Lockdown proc, and a Superior Winter's Bite proc, you've got a mag 3 hold that basically has a 81% chance to add an additional +4 mag for 6 seconds in PvP and a 90% to slow him down a bit. With a lot of global recharge (or other sources of hold) you should be able to stack the mag over 11. It's crazy overkill for PvE, but it could be a nasty surprise for your hubby!

Be (passive) aggressive! B-E (passive) aggressive!

If you want to be sneaky, and why in the world wouldn't you want to be sneaky?, as you level up have two builds. Build 1 is the one you use to team with him. Build 2 is the one you have ready to gank him. Some really sneaky things to do might involve slipping in some procs that he might not expect (like Absolute Amazement -to hit) or debuffing power pools that you may not have on your main build.

If it makes you feel any better, I pretty much have them committed to memory! But yeah, I learn new stuff all the time. It's great!

With respect to the title question, I'd say yes. We form a society of some sort, where we are undoubtedly very diverse in shape, form, and thought, but we all have one thing in common: we enjoy playing this game. For me, it's a very good thing to belong to a group like this. On a slight tangent, I'd like to express my opinion that there is *far* less dickery on HC than there was on Live. Maybe that's just my perspective, but I'm grateful for that. As far as all this about how to play on a team or whatever, I find it to be so much less important that what I discussed in the first paragraph that I personally find it practically irrelevant. Happy hunting!

I also recommend the debuff route. Although slows won't really affect Willpower's toggles, it will devastate attack chains and he won't be able to close with you while you destroy him from range.

I also never knew this.

Great work here! One thing I have learned about spawning Kronos over the years (after the Project Wildflower mission, portal to base or nowadays just use any other portal power to a zone. I usually choose Talos.) is that the amount of time it takes for it to spawn seems to vary tremendously from seconds to minutes, but I have never had it not spawn at all in dozens of attempts. I idly speculate if there is some sort of a random timer baked in, or if that is merely because someone was standing on or near the spawn site.

Why is there a flea in my vault?

I just saw this and wanted to say (belatedly) thank you so much for the post. I'm very grateful for constructive communication! There are clearly still issues, but I feel validated!!

War Mace and Battle Axe are very similar. The 9 powers are for the most part ports of smashing damage (War Mace) versus lethal damage (Battle Axe). As mentioned Battle Axe is all knockdown/knockup, while War Mace has some kd and stun in there as well. On the plus side, there are a lot of places to pop in FF +recharge procs. On the minus side, all that +recharge emphasizes that they are both pretty endurance hungry sets. And finally, and most important, you should choose a weapon skin that you like. If you like shovels, you're in luck, since you can have one either as Battle Axe or as War Mace!

Huh, just checked and it wasn't me after all. My cap is still intact!

Sounds like someone worked their way up to the cap I set last August. No apologies.