Ukase

That's why there's so many nem invasions! I forgot about the recipe.

When you defeat the mino, you're asked if you want prismatic and monstrous aethers, instead of the new name, Unstable Aethers. On the reward table that pops up. Sorry I didn't take a screen shot. Got ported into the Font and had to pay attention.

I was going through my roster, looking to delete characters I hadn't played in over a year. One such was an invuln/mace tank. I know I got a ton of levels on it with that first April Fool's event. As such, I just had never really invested much into the character, but when I looked at it closely, I saw it had all the day job badges, which I'd earned on it before the April Fool's event. It's a fine tank. No reason to delete it. And it only exists now because logging off/on, moving about, just for day job badges is a tiny bit annoying, I'm keeping it. For now.

Um...I'm frugal in the real world. I listen to Clark Howard and routinely look for ways to save more money. Not because I'm broke, but because my father told me something a long time ago. I was probably 12 or 13. At the time, he was teaching at a nearby University as an Economics professor. He would say "Every dollar you save multiplies to the bottom line". Now at 12, I didn't even know what a bottom line was. I was a kid. So, he could tell by my puzzled eyes elaboration was needed. He explained to me that if I were to mow a lawn for $5 bucks, and then spent $5 on comics, I would need to mow another lawn to re-earn that $5, and I'd likely have to wait a week to re-earn it. Or, I'd have to go door to door to find someone else as a customer to mow their grass for $5. So, most of us are adults, and you can see where he was going with this, and the lesson I got from it. For folks as obtuse as me, "It's not how much you make, but how much you save that's important" No way in hell am I going to spend one real dollar on some in-game loot. I donate when the window is open from time to time. If the game were to allow for such things, I'd love to sell my stacks of inf for real world cash on one inf for one dollar exchange, but that's seriously ridiculous to even write down. But hey, if I'm gonna make a wish for money, that's as good as any other wish. I couldn't get our country out of debt, but I could certainly buy a lot of stock and never have to sweat work again! So, the one microtransaction I never want to see is Pay X dollars for 10X influence. Or any X influence.

So, in a desire to learn more about the PB, I made another, and resolved to play it organically, no PL, and for most of the journey under level 30, no 2xp. I wanted to assess for myself if the PB specifically was really needing a rework. At least, from my perspective and in my worthless opinion, it really doesn't. I went human only - mainly because I wanted to avoid shape shifting to take advantage of the "changeling" option to squeeze more dps. And frankly, while I did find the damage to be kind of meh, it's not the only AT that gives me that feeling. I've felt that way with a number of other ATs. It's just a different way to solve the problems the game presents. I had some end issues because I was pursuing perma-lightform. But, the only issues were from the crash. It was easy enough to solve while leveling with START amplifiers, or recovery serums. And once I choose to Conserve Energy, in the high 30's, that was resolved. Having end issues is certainly normal in this game, and the solutions are there if you seek them out. So, I'm not convinced the PB needs any changes. We can't expect an AT that's designed to do so many things competently to do anything exceptionally. I will add that without proccing, I did think the dps was low. But a lot of that is my own playstyle, and lack of skill, I think. (Not that I'm without skill, but I tend to "overkill", using the next attack that's recharged, instead of a different attack that does lower damage but could get the kill. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. But I think a better skilled player would eke out a fair bit more dps than I do.) I can say, it was one of the few ATs I've played that never got defeated. Came close a number of times, but lightform recharged just in time. And with two heals, it's pretty hard to be defeated as a PB. But even in the lower levels, before the heals, and before Lightform, it's a sturdy armor for human form only. No juggling of slots to other forms and with lightform, status protection wasn't a concern from that point. In many ways, it was like a sentinel, but the resist caps were better, but a better mix of melee and ranged powers.

I usually avoid the concealment pool in favor of the celerity:stealth because often, the celerity with SS is enough. Both methods of stealth suppress when clicking on glowies, as well as entering combat. We're only allowed 4 power pools. And I just can't see not getting Combat Jumping. No idea how I'd play without it. I suppose I could go: Leaping Speed Concealment Leadership Then I could avoid SS. But apparently for reasons discussed, fly is too slow, and afterburner turns off too soon, and takes too long to recharge to suit my preferences. So, SS it was and shall be.

No comment

I appreciate everyone's answers. I knew they would make some kind of sense. But damn, I wish it were faster. But then, I wish I was faster, too.

I am someone who likes to zip through content for the merits. But one of the best things about these folks is they're smart and know the game. I usually learn something each session.

Anecdotally, and maybe it says more about me, I've had to redo a respec a couple of times on a couple of different occasions because I made a mistake. User error, no question. Some characters are super fast and easy to rebuild. And sometimes, while I'm doing the respec, I get called away, lose my place, or even worse, I think - why aren't I doing X instead of Y? And then, when the respec is over, I suddenly realize why X was the better option. It's my issue - nothing to do with the respec process. My biggest beef with it is we can only carry 70 enhancements in our trays, and our builds can hold almost 100, or more if you're a HEAT or VEAT.

There is one area of the market that I feel needs some attention. There's a few items that if players like myself and a few others were motivated, we could indeed temporarily cause problems. I have made suggestions that the drop rates of certain hamidon origin enhancements be re-visited, and no idea if that will garner any action or not. Look here: So, I'm pretty sure there was a time when these were selling for over 1 billion. I suspect that at least a couple of them still are. But suppose someone with deep pockets wanted to make a killing? The price of these, on the low side has been 225M. And that was just one. I figure it was placed by someone who got lucky and didn't have the inf to sell it for more, or it was a mistake in the list price. No idea. But the others that sold when that did went for 275M. If you're someone who hates to combine the enhancements: If you're someone that likes to take the risk on combining, and losing the enhancement into thin air: I'm not going to cut and paste each level of these. You folks can look for yourselves. There's 37 on the AH right now. It is more than feasible for me to buy them all, right now. Then what does the next player do when they want/need them? Slap in two boosted accuracies until someone finally lists them for sale? I imagine some players are just using 2 level 50+5 accuracies, or 1 50+5 acc and 1 50+5 recharge. Or some combo like that. Maybe they 4 slot it, with 2 of each, and dropping 2 slots from somewhere else. No idea. But this could happen. And the end result would be someone like Yomo who has a hundred or so stashed in their base who drop them for sale at some heinous price in his attempt to fill an obvious need. Or, maybe I relist them from the 325M to 450M, just to see if I can get it. Yes, I'd lose 45M just from the AH fee, but I'd still make 80M. And then, someone like Yomo says, "That's too much, I got these slow and patiently at 260M, I'll relist at 380M, and after fees, he makes 82M profit. Trust me, I'd have to sell a lot of enhancements to net 80M. It's about 3 hours of passive farming, if I don't count the drops. And it's risky, right? I have no way of knowing who has what in their bases, nor how they'll respond. Nor does the AH tell me if the item was earned and listed, or listed, bought, re-listed at a higher price, etc. All I can see is the item itself. Now, most folks who earn these love getting them. It's a nice pay day. And a level 35 on an Aeon SF can earn these. I wish I knew what the drop rate was. It's got to be about 1/25 though. Because I doubt I've run Aeon 25 times since it was created, and I've gotten one. (flawed logic, I am sure) I think it's right to be concerned, but ultimately, the market will straighten things out. And the player that tries to gobble them all up, will likely have to wait a very long time to recoup their investment, if they ever recoup it. We never know if something like the drop rate for something like this is on the agenda to be changed. It would take someone seriously interested and bored with a lot of free time to go through the Aeon SF and tabulate if the drop rate changed. Not even sure the folks in beta would be hip to a change like that. Not in that group, so no idea how much is discussed openly. Myself, I'm not worried about it. But I'm a scaredy cat investor. No way am I risking that much inf to make more when I don't need the inf and I'd rather have the enhancements. Strangely, I could make use of all those enhancements. The market really should have about 300 in stock so folks can get what they want without paying a gazillion inf. I've got some builds where the provocations cost more than the rest of the entire build.

So, this is a necro post, but on topic, sort of. We have movement caps. Caps to speed, caps to fly..and caps to teleport distance and caps to jump height and distance. I'm not going to ask why. I'm playing a PB, trying to like the set. Trying to learn what it's good at (nothing yet) and what it's bad at (no real strengths, but seems weak like other ATs in endurance and accuracy - but that's probably more about the content I'm running and how I build than the AT itself. I wanted to avoid Super Speed with this character. But, if I did, I'd have to take conceal because I'd rather get missions completed than clear maps. The XP will come. You guys can flail away all you like, I want the merits. But where I'm at right now is flying, slowly. So, here's my questions for your folks that are smarter than me, or at least think you are. Why does afterburner, and the PB equivalent Quantam turn off after a short time? (My detailed info and City of Data do not show what the duration is, I'm guessing 20-30 seconds) And why are people with flight okay with this? These powers are, well, inefficient as designed. Would it not be better to just increase the fly speed cap to 150, 200 mph? Why so slow? Super speed is a toggle. You turn it on, you can go as fast as you can go. There is no additional button to increase your speed. Why does Fly or Cosmic Flight have to endure this additional power execution? And did I ask why it's so slow? Seems like a no brainer to raise the caps so people have a reason to pursue increases in movement speeds. I'm sure this has been discussed, but when I typed in "Fly speed cap", my results found this on the third page, and I wasn't going to sift through every page to find something relevant. And did I ask why the caps are so low in the first place? It wouldn't hurt bystanders by ramping up the speed caps to something noticeable like 150 mph or so.

Back on retail, there was an app of sorts called Blinkie Finder. It did a demo record, and when you ran the demo record through blinkie finder, it would reveal where the glowies were, and where all the mobs were. Very useful for back when Quantums and Voids were a real hand full. But now, it sounds like all you need is invis. Just zip into the room and look around. The glowies find themselves just from the sounds they make. Some of the hostages are hard to find, sure. Generally a target macro will find them when my eyes can't. We already have this available for 10K inf from the START vendor. It's called Reveal.

The % chance for confuse I've seen work with the usual pink bubbles. I tend to only slot them in the nukes, or occasionally in fireball. As for the defense debuff - now that it's mentioned, I have seen the visual effects from it - kind of a light purple chevron, only upside down, looks kind of like a bird flying, if that makes any sense. I didn't know what that was. Just thought it was part of the npc's own fx. I was also testing the Achille's Heel proc, and I saw it working every couple of times..and I would see the same message repeated about 8 times, consecutively. I just figured the -def would give the same kind of message.

DFB's are simple, regardless of what level you're at, regardless of AT. They are designed as such - unless you're a newer player. So, there are some things that experience will teach you that aren't obvious. If your character doesn't have armor, being the first into the fray is a bad idea. In the DFB specifically, there's a lot of mobs, and they're not obvious when you approach. There are proximity bombs with a 10 second counter. I'm not sure what the proximity it - but they're in a hallway that you have to go through to get to the next stage. Often times, these can leave your health fairly low, making you an easy kill for some of the npcs. There's a theme around a lot of content as you level up, "avoid XYZ". In this case, it's avoid green bubbles at your feet when fighting the two heads at the end of DFB. A good team lead will tell you this. But anecdotally, those are maybe 1 in 20 that will relay various tips and tricks for better results. The key here is to not do a longer animation like Sands of Mu until after you've just avoided green bubbles. There's also being smart about using the jetpack you got at level 2 to avoid cadavers when you're a character without armor. Most teams go for that Cadaver Cleanser badge - so you have to avoid killing them until Meinst gets defeated. For ranged characters, this is kind of common sense - use the jet pack and spam your single target ranged attacks at the AV. Anecdotally, I would say 95% of my characters make it to level 50, t-4. That said, maybe 20% of them will get a final respec and be finely tuned to do what I want them to do, whether it's Labyrinth, Hami, or certain SSA arcs every week. The rest will sit idle, unless there's a reason for them to not sit idle.

Just recognize that the PvP IOs have 2 separate distinct sets of bonuses. One set of bonuses is for pve content, the other for PvP. There aren't many full pvp sets I end up using, but I do take a couple of pieces of one set to add with a standard non-PvP set. And I always look to see if the Glad Armor 3%, the Shield Wall 5% and the Panacea +HP/Endurance make sense in my builds - and with the latter, almost 100% of the time, it does. The first two, only about 90% of the time it makes sense to find a slot for them.

It continues to amaze me how many people do.

The truth is, I'm not serious at all. The past two days I saw a recruitment message for MSR. The first day I was placed on a team where a level 1 was on my team. Level 1. So, if level 1s are perfectly okay to bring - why not have everyone bring a level 1?

I think it's really a no-brainer. Not because folks can more easily get those badges, but because in a fashion, blowing 100 reward merits on the badges are an inf sink, which we need more of. That's not to say the same 100 merits can be saved and gone through during that short window of time, they can be. But, not everyone keeps a spreadsheet on their characters. They log in to them sporadically, and may notice they missed out. If the option is there, that's 300 converters, or maybe 20 boosters, or higher priced IO that's simply vanished into thin air in the shape of a badge. I acknowledge the slippery slope, and I think in most cases, a legitimate concern. But in this specific case, it seems unwarranted.

I can't recall. I think I read something about certain spawns being too low or too high since they made the Council changes a while back. And yet, all this time, the issue hasn't been addressed. Or is this a new problem? The mission is "Unmask Arakhn's Ally", which is in the "Scary Monsters" arc for level 30-35 Peacebringers, given by Sunstorm. I thought that perhaps it was the finale; and the older game would have expected me to be 33-35 by now, and not just level 30. Either way, it's only a +5 lieutenant. Should be fun.

I am inclined to echo what Seed22 says with a small caveat. Much of how you build depends on what you're doing with your character. Here's an example: I have a character that now does only one thing. It logs in, it aids in the killing of GMs, and then buffs the league, then dishes out damage to Hamidon, an end game boss. So, I didn't know it was going to do just that. But it seems suited for it, based on what the league leader stated would be preferred. (fire/nature corruptor for the curious) So, in that specific context, slotting for defense or resistance doesn't do me much good. Someone in the league usually spams a league buff to boost that protection, so my focus is on recharge and damage. The buffs I give, the important aspect, the damage buff, that can't be improved, only stacked with other buffs. Candidly, it's a pretty low bar to be useful in this raid. But, I have other characters that are better suited for other activities, so I just leave it where it is and log it on when the time is right. Most of my older characters followed a path of pursuing as much defense as possible, up to 45-50%, and then pursuing hitpoints and recharge. My flawed logic said I was solo more often than not, so I needed the protection. I was wrong. Well, mostly wrong. The game has kind of slowed down for me in the older content, so for whatever reason, the 45% defense I pursued has largely been unneeded. I think the 20-25% is about right. So, my newer characters all seem to ignore slotting for defense, other than using set mules for the lotg 7.5%. These characters do die a bit more often than my previous ones, but not that much more. Typically, if something defeats it, it would have defeated the more sturdy character as well. The procs: There's so much the average player doesn't know about procs! Myself included. And I think that permeates to the HC devs, too. I highly recommend you invest in some unslotters for each proc you slot. Visit the pylons outside the VG base in RWZ, and see how often they fire. Sometimes, they do, and sometimes they don't. Do you want to risk the loss of potential damage by using a damage proc that doesn't fire 3 out of 4 times? Does the extra damage from the proc that works one out of 4 times worth it to you? Only you can answer that. Every damage proc has a 5% chance to work, and a 5% chance of failure. So, you can't just attack the pylon a few times, you need to get about 30 hits in to really know what your odds are. Different players have different expectations and acceptable risk levels for procs. It's hard to go off of one person's recommendations. I would recommend you forgo procs for now. Maybe just proc one power, and see how that plays out. For every power you proc, there are some set bonuses you're missing out on. At worst, it's like 10% recharge from a very rare set, and the higher boost in accuracy and recovery. At best, it's some nominal attribute that doesn't matter much. It all depends on the rest of your build. And one last thing: While a player can "see" that you have certain set bonuses, it's going to be very rare that someone ever looks, and even rarer still for them to even have a clue what you've slotted, aside from various uniques that are listed. Build your character for your fun, nobody else's. Don't feel like you have to break the bank in pursuit of very rare sets, or specific uniques. It's just a game, and it's not that serious.

I did take two brutes into the AA asteroid farm. One brute was spines/fire, the other was rad/fire. The rad/fire had atomic smash on auto, and the spines/fire had burn. I'd thought about the other AoE because of the increased targets, but the damage wasn't enough to suit me. Both survived, but accuracy was an issue because I had dropped leadership as it wasn't necessary for afk-farming. Helpful, but not necessary. With a boost in accuracy, the speed was as you might expect, slower. To me, even though I afk farm when I do farm, all I'm after is the drops, that's where the money is. So, to me, it was more about my curiosity. You'll need to do some math and generate a touch more accuracy/toHit, and probably increase your regen a smidge. Other than that, most of you should be fine.

So, I'm puzzled. I'm sure there's some logical explanation, but I've no idea what it is. Maybe it's a known issues, or something is happening behind the figurative curtain and I just can't see it. Gleaming Blast. Yet, when I use the attack on the Pylon in RWZ (one of the three found to the left of the exit of the vg base, as you're leaving the base), there's no mention of reducing the target's defense. Is this an issue with the pylon, or the attack? Why do I not see any "Gleaming Blast reduces the defense of pylon by 18% for a short time" or some such? Instead, I see this: (for the curious, it's just a level 26 PB, with only 4 slots in the attack currently - just trying some procs out to see if they're worth it. I don't think they are. They only work like one out of 3 times after about 30 attacks)

So, I'm thinking of forming an MSR with a level 1. And only invite level 1's. Think we'd get to the mothership?

A mu-mu; a lei. A horse head. And a large sack, kind of what you would picture Santa carrying, over the shoulder - with the ability to put it on the ground nearby - still holding it or not. (Not gonna hold my breath)