Ukase

Yep.

I am wondering if the name is too ...colorful for some folks. That is the name of the character. Bad HOs. But someone will likely go there, lol.

When I'm zipping through content for mission objectives only, I don't need or use them. But - when I'm playing at +4/1 on a level 5, I use them all, and wish I had more. As for why my level 5 is playing at +4, it's a stupid idea I got from Yomo. Matthew Habashy's arc is great for it, because you really aren't fighting that many mobs. And when you call in the last mission, it's a nice chunk of XP.

Ah, I love this topic. So rich in varying degrees of opinions. I heard something in league chat a couple of weeks ago. And it's paraphrased. Wish I had the quote. (paraphrased) I find there's more than enough inf just from playing. But, to each their own. Now, in the context of the discussion, I took that to mean they have plenty of influence and don't struggle. I didn't pin them down, as it wasn't the right time, and frankly, I didn't have a strong enough relationship with them to push back on their thinking. There's a player that I thought was a newer player. They needed help with something fairly simple - determining which of the 6 arcs in Atlas they hadn't done. A trip to ouro and I helped them figure it out. Soon, they complained, or perhaps it was just mentioning that they needed 100M to get the Will of the Controller set of ATOs. I was dumbstruck. 100M? I checked the AH. Those pieces were going for 8M. Then they said Superior WotC. I explained as best I could, as English isn't their first language that you simply buy them standard and make them superior. Then the next day, I see them on an alt with over 100 vet levels. I've no idea how someone gets to that kind of vet level and not be just rolling in influence. But, I can't see what they're doing, or how many alts they have that lay unenhanced because this player has no concept of how to use the market. Currently, I've made a character on Victory. Helped someone do a Frostfire. While I was waiting for the recruiting, I did some crafting, converting, enough to buy my ATOs at level 15. But, I know how. Some of it I knew from retail, some I stole picked up from Yomo's guide, and other posts. By far, I made most of my inf from the winter-O pack sale. Like some of you, I make my characters earn their way through. I don't often drop a chunk of inf on them, send them to START and plow forward, full steam ahead. (sometimes, I do) In this case, I'm experiencing more difficulty in amassing the stacks of inf. It's coming, but more slowly. Now, clearly it's competition. There's a ton of it. PvP recipes, which I still have lowball bids out for - literally 1000's of lowball bids on, are selling for 4M and more? Someone clearly is competing with some others to get into that niche. I see those crafted recipes selling for 5 to 20M, just depending on the keystroke errors of those in a rush, or those who have more inf than patience. (or sense) It's a tough niche if you don't watch your converter cost. Or even if you do. And I think that's where the rub is for some of these players. Most don't mind slapping some converters on the AH to grab some quick loot. They don't necessarily mind spending 100 merits for a winter (even though the case can be made you'd make more profit using the 300 converters you'd get with those merits) some folks just want to kill stuff. That's why they're here. To live vicariously through their alt. Ultimately, it leaves me with one conclusion: this game just isn't for everyone. And that's okay. HC has made the market so much better than it ever was in retail. The barrier of entry to do things on scale..that barrier isn't nearly as high as it was on retail. But, it's still high. Farming - my only beef with farmers is when they PL someone without having any idea or care if that person understands anything about the game. Other than that, farm away. Doesn't bother me in the least. I farm my own alts, usually from 30 to 35. And sometimes from 41 to 45. Just depends on the character. But, I don't bug anyone - except for that player that really wants to team up and can't get a team. That player might dislike farmers for not playing the way they do. And that's not to say they don't want those players to ever farm, but to stop and help them and then go back to farming after their string of missions they wanted to do is over. Some things in game, like the universal damage sets...I wish they could be earned other ways instead of just that specific content. And I suppose, indirectly they could be. You'd just have to blow through reward merits at an heinous exchange to get them. For now though, I think we leave well enough alone. I've been going out of my way to gift chunks of inf to newer players, trying to gauge how much assistance they want.

It's already been mentioned. Jack Emmert, love him or hate him, stated clearly that the only reason to play this game was to team up. Trinity aside, their intent was to have people team up, and make friends as they played, resulting in continuing subscriptions so you could keep teaming with your friends. And maybe experience some interesting content while you're at it. Not sure which issue it was, but sometimes around issue 4-5, or maybe before, there were fire tanks telling other players "I don't need you". And the controllers and defenders were left outside in the cold, having to find a desperate scrapper or blaster to aid them in reaching their goals. (Pre CoV, you know) It wasn't long after that, they put fear into burn. Suddenly, a controller that could lock down a group had some utility. I myself reaped the benefit of a grav troller who would use repel, forcing family into my burn patch. Fun times. Sisterhood player, college student destressing before her finals. No idea what happened to her in real life, but a nice person. Now, just because it was always like that, and planned that way to discourage soloing, doesn't mean it has to remain that way. But I am not smart enough to find a way to allow controllers to reap the same benefits as a blaster solo, without them being a true force multiplier on a team, to the point of ridiculousness. I'm not saying controllers shouldn't do more damage. Maybe give them a damage buff when they're solo the way defenders get one. At least before level 30. That's over fast enough anyway.

Well, on blue side the loot is called influence. I've got a fair amount of it. And as I try to consider this term, I think it's fitting. I can influence any battle with my influence. Summons, Super Insps, START vendor temp powers..I really ought to look into trying to get to 50 without using any attacks of my own. Just START vendor goodies. But that's just silly. And it's probably been done by someone already. It's just a good thing the inf we earn from drops or wherever comes out of thin air, otherwise, I suspect even Recluse would have to sell his helmet to be able to afford to eat. And what's the guys name that has a cut scene about coffee? Arbiter Sands, I think. Yeah, that dude would not be getting any primo coffee at all. He'd be broke.

Well, when I stated there were probably 5-10 players that could articulate...you're one of them. At least in my book. So, based your insight - why do you think things remain as they are instead of different? Just a lack of desire on the part of the dev team, or are there opposing views? In all transparency, the reason I don't play stalkers and scrappers is because I lack that detailed knowledge you mention, and frankly, melee is just more difficult for me than ranged. Ranged is easy street, especially on a blaster, because if I want to go in to melee, I can. And if I want to play it safer, I can do that too.

It's no secret I'm not the smartest person when it comes to these nebulous terms like "balance". One person might play these ATs in a way where they appear balanced. Another would have a different experience. So many of us lay out these comments as if they're true for everyone. The ATOs are what they are. The ATs are what they are...until we change a few things. Is it time to change the ATOs, instead of changing the ATs? Who am I to say? What's clear to me is there might be 5-10 folks who post in these forums who can articulate why something should be done a certain way, and they'd have the knowledge and experience to back up their premise. The rest of us...I'm not saying we're clueless, but the articulation is lacking. For me, I know there's a lot that I don't know. I've been playing blasters since I started this game, and I still learn new stuff. There's a lot of layers to this game. I just want to try to have more fun with it, and argue/debate less.

Have you heard anything in the dark whispers of Beta?

So, they are expensive for the average player. But, it's not impossible to get them. 100 RMs each? Consider an hour in the abyss. 5 runs, if you grab the merits each time, that's 240 reward merits. And..well, if you do it every other day, you could leave the reward unclaimed and get 280 merits for 5 runs. What I've done is create characters specifically to buff the league, and they rotate duties. If there's low attendance, sometimes I can swap and snag an extra 40. I suppose it depends on your definition of insufferable. As for me, my characters can snag those out of email because I've been around since before they put those winter packs on sale for 10M and bought a bunch. Still have some I haven't opened.

Well, while I think my idea is super silly, the market just isn't ready for it yet. There simply aren't enough of a certain HO available on the market to build this character as planned. So, my choices are to bid and wait..or to scrap the project. Hopefully, just my posting will encourage our dev team to at least take a look at the drop rates of certain HO/D-syncs.

Well, the way things are now; nothing is broken. Sometimes it is indeed best to leave well-enough alone. But, I do think it would be much simpler to allow certain HO/D-Syncs to drop a smidge more often.

My understanding is there's some "code limitations" preventing this from happening. I've no idea what that specifically means, though. Maybe it's just we don't have a volunteer programmer willing or able to code it. Maybe there's some other issue preventing it from being a thing. No idea. But, if that is the case, they could easily re-visit the drop rate, and where/how these enhancements drop. As of now, what I imagine a low demand enhancement - the stereocilia/Deceleration (bucketed as the same thing) there are only 14 of these for sale. 8 of them being level 50. Now, there's 361 people bidding on these at a price, presumably lower than 16M. No way to know other than sell a bunch for cheap. The Cyto, one of the more popular ones Only 37 total Cyto for sale, with over 1/3 of them being lower than level 50. There are 2400 bids for all of them, collectively. The Acc/threat/Rec Only 23 of them in total - and I'd bet more folks would bid on them, but they're the most expensive. 850 bids for them, collectively. Conversely, 1306 Centrioles are available. (across all levels) Looking at the price...amazing there are any outstanding bids at all. From a marketing perspective, someone might be buying them, combining to make 53's and relisting. Never know when someone who doesn't know any better is going to come along and pad your pockets. I could go on, but the point is pretty clear. There are players that would use these if they were more readily available. I'm not saying make the Acc/threat/Rec as easy to get as a dam/mez. I'm just saying look at the drop rates for all of them. Even some of them out. Amlyoplast, Stereocilia, the cytoskeleton - all three could use a little glance and see if their drop rate odds could be improved.

I posted this in the controller forum. I was having a chat with some folks in The Abyss about how the rng is just a very fickle beast sometimes. I've gotten my share of acc/dams, sure. But I do feel at a loss when I get something like a Golgi or a ribosome. Someone in the league mentioned Golgis are great for spirit ward. Like when would I ever use spirit ward? You'd have to take the sorcery pool for that. Eww! I've hated that pool ever since they nerfed adjusted the recharge on Rune of Protection. So, maybe it's time to just put the sour grapes on that aside and try to make lemonade out of the many lemons. (peroxisomes and endoplasms) This is what I've got so far. Probably not the finished product. And the scary part is - with IO set bonuses, I could probably make fade permanent, making this controller very interesting to play. I've no idea if there are enough stereocilla's to actually do this build. Maybe one day, the powers that be will revisit the HO drop table. Because Lady Grey TF is just too long with some pugs, and on speed teams, I can barely keep up. So, I'll spend the inf - but hard to do when they're not available on the AH. For now, it's a decent joke for me to grin at. Bad HOs - Controller (Ice Control - Darkness Affinity).mbd

I gotta say it. This is probably the most important part. But not the only part. If you can get those 8 folks to play these: 2 rad defenders 1 ice/natty corr 1 fire/natty corr 1 fire/cold tank 1 cold/ice def 1 ice/mc blast 1 fire/mc blast I use this specific collection only because I've played them and know what they're capable of. The buffs from the defs and corrs collectively will almost make the tank useless...but burn is and always will be amazing. You add in 2 overgrowths with 2 sets of rad debuffs...I dunno. The secondary of the blasters certainly has perception bias on my part. I really like Burst of Speed now, as when you do all three bursts, it's every bit as good as a nuke. So, with practice, and maybe discord - that's a boat load of dps. Not to mention two blizzards, two infernos, and 2 fire balls.

For the curious and bored - here's the build. Even using trash HOs, this is going to be expensive, requiring a lot of micros and some HO that's never dropped in any hami raid I've been a part of. I can only assume they're Lady Grey specific. Not many of them on the AH, either. Stereocilla is the name of them. Bad HOs - Controller (Ice Control - Darkness Affinity).mbd

Well, the task I've set for myself is pretty silly. Even the name is silly, and potentially offensive. "Bad HOs", an ice/dark controller. It's really strange slotting, because I've never played Ice control before. I keep having to go into enhancement management to see what they'll take, so I can determine the appropriate number of slots. I've a feeling, using HOs only, this may be the first character where I feel I have too many slots to fill. Maybe I should have made it a HEAT.

On retail, there I was in Croatoa, I think. I was on a blaster, my friend was on a scrapper. I found an ice controller to help us out. This was way back, maybe 2004? 03? I remember seeing ice slick. It saved my from my ineptitude back then fairly often. So, in the Abyss, after getting a ribosome and a teammate getting a golgi, I joked that I was going to make a character using nothing but HO/d-syncs for enhancements. At the time, I thought "Ice/Dark". Two pets, should be fine. Now, I know I'm going to PL this character, and then play it. I probably won't even worry about accolades. Just for fun. So, I open up mids. Seriously? How does a controller play this game and get levels? This thing has almost no attacks. A lot of mitigation, but even with procs - which I'm not going to use for the reason mentioned above, well, I guess that explains why I don't see ice controllers around that often. Something should be done, though. This just doesn't seem equitable compared to the offensive juggernaut of illusion and other sets. And yes, I know on a team, the buff/debuffs are pretty nice, but I don't feel like this character is going to be a great teammate with the lack of offensive power.

I think the OP raises a point. I could be nicer about some of the things I don't like. And some folks - it's probably just things missing from the voice to text translation, but they just come off really abrasive. And really, there are some folks that will vote down on everything, no matter what it is. But that's just perception bias on my part, I'm sure. But to the OP's point - yes, feedback to an idea can take many forms, but do we need to state the obvious about dev time and their volunteer status? Now, in some cases, yeah, I think it's a valid thing to mention, because the ideas some of us have - we have no idea what it would take to implement them.

So, your goals - the mini-pets and such, I'm on board with you there. I kind of like the look of the icons as much as the pets. Here's the fire/mc build I used with the labyrinth in mind. On Excelsior, Elysian Guardians and Goddess run this every day; so, I'm on a league, so I'm not worried about defenses that much. Apache Fire Lab - Blaster (Fire Blast - Martial Combat).mbd

There was a time on retail when purples sold for close to 300M in some cases. The PvP IO uniques would literally sell for 2B, and a lot of trust was extended in trading the inf for the IO. Now, on HC we don't have these problems, thankfully. That is, in part, due to the inexpensive way of acquiring enhancement converters. Right now, D-Syncs, HOs, Titan-Os, Hydra-Os - those are all pooled in the same category, and are not an option for using converters. Right now, I'll tip my hand and say I'd like to get my hands on about 20 Acc/Dam HO/D-sync (whatever form they come in, all in the same pool, doesn't matter) and another 20 acc/threat/rec. There's not even 20 of those on the AH, even if I were okay with spending the inf cap on each one - which I'm not. I've got my lowball bids in, and if they go through, great. If not, I'll wait. The bad news is, I've got maybe 100 of these not-so-good HO/D-syncs in my base. I'm just waiting to find a reason to use them, where the reason for their use is greater than the set bonus it'll cost me to use them. I've even thought about making "Hami-Man" who's level 50 build consists entirely of HOs. Try it on mids. A great way to spend an hour with nothing spectacular, numbers wise. And even then, you're still gonna want some Cytos or d-sync equivalent thrown in. The folks that like to run the advanced mode stuff - they're smart. When they get those drops, I suspect they're keeping the good ones for their alts. Or, selling them at a point where even an inf-rich player like myself says, "Um...no. It's not THAT important to me". When supply is low, demand results in higher prices. I get it. We all get it. So, what happens if we were able to use converters on HO/D-Sync, etc. ? That acc/mez isn't so terrible. It might cost you 100 converters, but you might very well get that HO you want. Now - if this change were to be made - would advanced mode play decrease? Maybe. Not by a lot, I don't think. Still plenty of other rewards in play there, and I think most of those players are in it for the fun more than the rewards. I could certainly be wrong about that. Is it worth lobbying for this change? Some of you don't even play to 50, so you don't care. But for those that do, how would it feel to finally get the Acc/threat/rec and suddenly see it's only worth 100M instead of 500M-1B? Or folks like me that have already spent over 2B in those enhancements? The "game/HC" likes it because it removes 10% of the inf from the economy right away. Not to mention what gets removed by the seller when they use that inf to buy something they want. I don't really know how deep that initial sink goes, but it's just a drop in the bucket when you think of how much inf comes into the economy every day. So, is this worth asking for? Will it ruin someone's life or experience by taking the one part of the game that's not fungible in the way that other enhancements are, and making them convertible via enhancement converters? How many converters should it cost? 5? 10? 30? 100? I don't think it will ever happen. But I wish it would. I've a use for them, but the A/T/Rs are just not on the market.

Then why not just say it, with actual words? As evidenced by a number of posts here, these "reactions" are not clear indicators of anything. The irony of confusing people with a confused reaction is almost funny.

It'll be awhile. I know this is probably supposed to be an inf sink, but having consolidated all my prismatics to one character, it's not really an issue. But the opportunity cost, it's like 2B inf, give or take. That amount shouldn't bother me, but if it didn't bother me, then I probably would have a lot less than I do now.

Probably been reported already. Spirit Drain, a power from Dark mastery for a corruptor - I think it should read "Ranged AoE".

Just so you don't feel too badly...Okie was giving instructions last night for MoBAF. Preceding the prisoner phase, he types out "set to aggressive - stay". Now, the aggressive part..been doing that since day one. The "stay"...I swear, I'd never used that before and although I'm sure I "saw" it, it never registered. I've never used it until last night.