Ukase

This is a fair point, and I appreciate the history reminder. I'd forgotten about this as well as a couple of others.

Good points, I appreciate it.

A lot has changed for me in since the latest patch hit. I've been angry, delighted, wrong, right, against something, only to be persuaded to look at things differently. I am truly puzzled sometimes at what goes through the minds of those that are running this game. Fact or fiction: Only 10% of the player base reads and posts on the forums. Fact or fiction: The game is too easy. For everybody. At all levels. Only at incarnate levels. Fact or fiction: The new Master of TF/SF settings are good for the game. I could go on. And on. I'm really trying to have an open mind, but I'm old, and it's difficult. I've been trained to not be easily swayed and skeptical. I was toilet-trained at gunpoint, what can I say? Hidden in gigantic letters and a picture in the patch notes that I somehow overlooked, turns out a Master of Kahn or Barracuda disallows incarnate powers. Never mind that I have 5 characters that got the Master of Kahn and Master of Barracuda (more properly known as Master of the 5th Column Task Force and Master of the 5th Column Strike Force, respectively). And they got to use incarnate powers. So are those characters to be stripped of this badge and forced to re-earn it? That doesn't seem to be the case. Yet, as far as I know, there's no distinction between the badges, whether earned pre or post patch. Is that right? Is it proper? Am I making too much fuss out of nothing? I've been fairly isolated due to the pandemic, and remain so, and as a result, I can hardly tell when I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. I already know some are for, and some are against any issue presented. It made sense that with the 3 new Master trials - Eden, ASN, and MC that they might be set up differently, as they're trials and not task forces. Not at all sure why they have two terms for the same type of experience. What's the difference, anyway? So, when I saw that incarnates were disabled for these new master trials, I didn't think much of it. But to modify the requirements for badges that are already earned in game goes against the grain of how this game has been run. I encourage the HC devs to think about this a bit more. This inability to use incarnates during a master TF/SF is a new requirement for badges other folks have already earned much more easily. I don't think this is the right way. In fact, I KNOW it's not the right or fair thing to do. But I'm not paying a penny, so all I have is this forum to encourage you to rethink your position on this. For new badges, go nuts if you must. But for badges that are already in game...that's not right. At least, I don't think it's right. Opinions will vary, as they often do. I'm sure there are people that play this game and enjoy such challenges. I like some challenges, but I like challenges that let me use my character's powers to it's full effect. Like in Really Hard Way, in the Magisterium. Even the disallowing of buffs I'd already paid 8 hours for that are now wasted, because they're not a toggle as was earlier suggested they would become is okay, because I can still use the powers that I earned, as opposed the ones I paid for from p2w. Now, a master run is more like an ouroboros challenge mission. None of this, none of that. Forget those countless runs of BAF and Heather Townsend. Those powers you earned mean nothing to anyone now. If you want to use them, you'll have to do non-master run activities. No badges for you. I don't think I'm alone in stating that while some of us like challenges, we want to use our powers, too. All of them.

Now, I read your reply, in which you used logic quite well, illustrating that one cannot please all the people all the time, nor even some of the people all of the time. And there are certainly players who like and embrace KB, and those who do not. But, just because I haven't stated two of my anecdotes in the forums, doesn't mean they didn't happen. I certainly didn't share this first one, because I was the rude party. I've kindly, as in, gone out of my way, and taken mercy on a lower level defender, and allowed them to join my team as I go burning Freakshow in Crey's Folley. No sooner do I herd them up, and the defender does some sort of plasmatic taser type attack and blows them out of my burn patch. So, I yelled at him in writing, "Hey, don't knock the freaks out of my burn patch, you moron!" Ahem..I probably chose some more colorful language. The next tale, well, I was a by-stander, and witnessed the wordy debate in chat. There was an SG leader, two SG members, and three pugs. I was one of the pugs. The one with KB was another one of the pugs. One of the two sg members started typing out commands to the pug blaster to stop KBing "His" target. I suggested he press F and be right back at his target immediately. Would've been faster and easier than typing out all that rage. Long story short, although I do love a long story, the whole thing escalated into un-fun silence. And when I say escalated, the SG leader dropped Coalition with my SG of one for telling the leader to teach his members some manners, and then preceded to alienate just about everyone on Excelsior server in the months to follow. Thankfully, they don't play anymore. Sure, these are more revealing of deficiencies in player personalities than the powersets. But they are still there. You just don't hear about them, because ...what is it estimated? 90% of players don't visit the forums. Something like that. And what good would it do? The event is passed, and there's nothing to gain. Oddly, ever since that interaction, I have been far more tolerant of KB, and even encouraging of it. Yet, I also recognize the frustration felt by other players when they have to deal with it. I don't see a solution to this minor problem (for me). It's not really that big of a deal to me. But I can see how it can be a big deal to others. The problem is, when I tell folks to use the F key, they don't use it to follow the npc, they use it to type expletives. They really do get frustrated and angry. And the truth is, that should be expected. I would submit that most that do play this game do not limit their playtime to 3 hours a week or something like that. I figure most are escaping from their real life, from whatever problems they may have. The reasons don't really matter. I say all that to say this: I clearly can't and shouldn't generalize our entire player base, it wouldn't be fair or nice. But I do strongly suspect at least half are dealing with things that impact them emotionally, to the point they are not always logical in their thinking. Consider the average age of the player base now..what is it? 40? Playing a game that is as big a time sink as raising twin babies as a single parent? That's not entirely rational in itself. If it is logical behavior you wish to see, I'm afraid you will be disappointed more often than not.

How dare you use logic? You're absolutely right, of course.

Such restraint! What have you done with our Snarky? In all seriousness, I don't disagree. And I wonder who thought it would be a good idea to go forward with a powerset that has KB, when it's so controversial. The rebuttal is always, "there's a kb-kd IO you can use". But, that's a cop-out. Every slot is in demand for almost every build. To waste one with a KB-KD for EACH attack, that's not smart. You just have to embrace the knockback and try to be clever about your avatar positioning when fighting. Or stop playing it, and let the dormancy speak for you.

This is the best advice. Doing any other thing is just a waste of my time. Always craft, convert and sell or use your drops! You don't do it for a badge, you do it to fund your next alt. The badge is gravy. On my characters that pursue this badge - Craft all the common IOs required. Then, have my farmer give all the recipes it gets from drops and do the crafting until the badge is awarded. Takes almost no time at all, really. A couple minutes after each farm map. Oh, on the empowerment buffs, You can delete those buffs once you get them and burn your salvage to get them all over again.

There is no "wrong" way to play, and no "wrong" power set combos to play. Enjoy the journey. I encourage you not to rush through it. Savor it. Over time, a bit more of what CoH has behind the figurative curtain will reveal itself. I keep thinking I've played every mission in this game multiple times, but every now and then, I find some that I've forgotten or never did. With the invention system, there really aren't any true Cookie-cutter builds. There's so many different ways to build a character, that if you find one combo, like fire/fire blaster fun, you can re-roll another one and instead of focusing on one facet, like AoE damage, you can focus on hit points and defense and see how different the experience is. There are still probably hundreds of power set combos I've yet to try. Stephen King once said, "Everything old becomes new again". I'd put off electric blast - my very first character on CoH live...never made it to 50 on that one. But now, the time has come to revisit with the new changes. Welcome and I strongly encourage you to email @yomo and insist he give you 20M or you'll sing "Paper Roses" by Marie Osmond to him. He will gladly give it to you.

Yeah, but dark secondary is pretty ugly (to me) visually - at least what little I can see of it. There's no crunch like stone or mace, so what good is being able to survive if your avatar is making all those gross sounds? (I'm totally kidding) I was wondering about the truth of your statement until I saw your secondary was dark. Try it with cold. Frost and Burn are a hoot in conjunction with each other - but you may find yourself over your head with some NPC factions. Risk vs. reward and all that.

So, this is a fair question. I think I'd be safe to say 90% of "farm builds" use burn. But, let's take a look at the game as a whole, not just AE and other farm scenarios. I definitely will stipulate, that burn, much like blizzard is a psuedo-pet, of sorts. It seems quite accurate unslotted until you get to +2 to +4 mobs, then you'll see the "miss" words popping overhead for council. Toss in some vampyri in there, and you'll see it a LOT, even with accuracy. But, let's consider the fiery armor, that a player must choose to get burn. No kickback protection - overcome by a kb prot. IO. Now, that gets you past...oh, 90% of the game, but if you want to go all melee in the hive, you'd better find a way (looking at you teleport pool) to slot 4-5 of those kb-prot. to be on scale with any of the other armors. Either way, you have to use more slots to get to a "level" playing field with other tanks. No defense debuff resistance - Sure, a fire tank gets capped fire resist if they choose Temp. Protection at about level 15 or so. It can make leveling in a farm very fast. But outside of a farm, you'll need to be attentive to your endurance recovery, your recharge for the self-heal, and your defensive stats. You almost have to take Ageless for your Destiny to get some fleeting DDR every couple of minutes. Depending on the secondary, a fire tank CAN be quite useful outside of a farm. But, burn is not likely to be slotted with procs as a farmer would. So many slots are used to shore up defensive and resistance holes that dps and hitpoints take a back seat. So, while I do think burn is fantastic, it needs to be. If you put "fear" back in burn, or reduced the recharge significantly, essentially 90% of the folks that play a fire tank would just stop playing them. Other tanks (and brutes) that aren't fiery aura are just too close in dps without the KB & DDR handicaps. I remember thinking my fire/ice tank was fantastic. I have 90% s/l/f/e resistance. Love seeing the blue capped numbers! I took it at the usual setting through the incarnate missions in DA. Couldn't hit the Tsoo very well without munching a lot of yellows. The Banished Pantheons...couldn't hit them, and they floored any defense I did have to negative numbers. I'd hit burn, but it was like it wasn't even on. I had to reset the mission and adjust the levels down to +1 before I could get through them. And it still took a while. (solo) So, yeah, burn is good, but even with what I consider a solid build for non-farm content, it ain't THAT good to overcome various NPC factions like Banished Pantheon, Arachnos, Nemesis at high difficulty levels. At base difficulty, yeah, simple. But +4/8, even +2/8 will make you want to reroll rad armor with a quickness.

Thanks.

The fact is - the player that had the WP tank that you once tried - is not the same tank as yours. Both are the tank archetype. Both had WP primaries. Maybe you both had the same secondaries as well! But they are not the same tank. They are not the same because you, and that other player are not the same. The way you play, and the way you slot your characters are likely to be different. This other fellow that added a bunch of IOs - he improved his defenses. Regardless of where he stood on the bad/good spectrum, adding defense makes his character better. And well, WP - it's pretty decent with haphazard slotting. With proper slotting, it's quite good. And just in case you didn't know, there are no "Bad ATs". It's entirely too subjective. I think a warshade is crap. But the MFin' Warshade folks will vehemently disagree. (Dechs Kaison, the initial genius behind that "brand" of warshade, if memory serves.") I don't think warshades or PBs have enough slots to really enjoy the utility of a tri-from kheldian. Just my opinion. Doesn't make me correct. I also think an ice/ice blaster is the "best" AT in the game. But, the numbers are pretty clear that fire/fire is slightly better. But - a good ice blaster is better than a bad fire blaster. When someone tells you "that AT is trash", what they really are saying is, "I don't play that AT well. It's not suited to my style". There is no best in CoH. It's all subjective. I would venture that some folks can play any and every avatar in this game, maybe even my own characters better than I can. They have faster reflexes, perhaps more experience in certain content than I do. I might think a poison defender is unworthy of a slot space in my 1000 slot allotment. Some claim them to be a force multiplier against AVs. Doesn't matter to me if they are weak in damage against even con foes in the teen levels. I won't get high enough to face AVs unless I PL them, and what's the fun in that? (for me)

Why? What's the gain? And do I have to give my email to do so?

I don't really pay enough attention to Lore. What has sunk in, has only done so through sheer repetition. I do appreciate the humor in Aeon SF, though. There is one other thing that the Aeon SF does that I hope will become a pattern. When higher notoriety is chosen, the NPCs within the map should present additional attacks or defenses to overcome. That said, I would prefer that most, but not all new story arcs and missions follow the Praetorian model, in that they are all in the same zone, and they are never more than 4-5 missions long. And I don't mean like the last couple of missions in Aeon either, where they squeeze multiple objectives across different maps and call them all the same mission. The Ripples in Aeon - those are essentially 3 different missions, all within that one mission. The same with the last mission. If a new story arc were to follow this model, that one mission could be an entire arc. In Aeon's case, much of that may be sped through, but if not, it certainly adds to the time involved. And, seeing as how these challenges all but require additional teammates, it's helpful to be able to run these in a single hour long session, or less. What might be very compelling is to have "smart" notoriety settings. The game should have some internal mechanism to determine what AT and powersets are present in the map. It would be interesting to see a different set of challenges as far as defenses, attacks depending on team composition. No idea how that would specifically be accomplished, but that would certainly make every mission as close to different as possible. Did the fire/dark tank leave the team, replaced by an ice tank? Don't look now, but the mobs in this mission seem more resistant to slows and cold. Something along those lines. Or use "Untyped" damage. I've no idea, but to have the same Frostfire mission, where the challenges encountered vary with team composition automatically - beyond spawn size & level, that'd be interesting.

It would. But it's not notation I use daily. So, when I see 1.5e+14, is there really any information conveyed to the average reader? Not likely. 150,000,000,000,000 probably gives the meaning far more clearly than Scientific Notation. And, well, candidly, I don't think in Scientific notation. I think in numbers. So, it's 15 followed by a lot of damn zeroes.

Eh, I probably could have worded things better.

I have now completed this a number of times with groups of folks that I would consider "better than average" and "average". My experience with it was specifically for Master. I see no reason to do it for any other purpose, other than perhaps to farm for the defeat badges within. The last mission is ...interesting...at least I think it's the last mission. It's rather like 3 small missions. You zone in and Becky's there (if you bothered to do the dialogue) and the building seems to be sideways. Very interesting look. Then we go through a blue portal - very small, tiny blue portal that if others didn't see it, I never would. It should be about 3 to 5x bigger than it is. We go through, and find some objects and then go through another portal, also very tiny...and I wouldn't see this one either, if I hadn't seen a teammate pop through it. It's strange - I use my map, and I see none of my teammates are on the map with me. They've gone through the portal, I haven't, and it's a bit off-setting. Yet, on my team list, we're all still on the same map, effectively. Anyway, I go through the portal, we beat up a couple more AVs in this odd Mother Mayhem mind-space like place, and eventually go through another door, to the last part. So, there are blue patches we have to avoid - if we're going for a badge. Avoid the blue stuff. Great. (yes, that's sarcasm) Fortunately, there's a different targeting mechanic..that I'm told is now currently glitched on occasion. Well, before shut down, patches hit that weren't perfect as well. It's a solid story. It's interesting that on different difficulty levels, that npcs have different abilities to account for. I have died more from Brickernauts exploding than from any other NPC in the game, ever. I really wish the graphics for this were more visible on my system. Damned hard for me to see them. If I'm not on Discord, they'll get me 4 out of 5 times because I don't see them. The best part is the first mission though. The tired scientist that's sleeping next to the glowing object that we have to take Becky to...after that, it's all downhill for enjoyment.

Um...I don't see any difference between the ice melee here and the one in the video.

The thing about pre-made rigs and pricing is that it's entirely too easy to compare apples to oranges. One may have an SSD that's 1 TB, and the other may be an HDD that's 1/2 TB. One might have Dimm ram, and another may have an entirely different type of ram. One may be upgradeable - as in, you could opt to increase your memory, upgrade to the next gen of CPUs, so many damn differences between one rig and the next. My gut says, yeah, certain components, if you're buying them as an individual will be cheaper in a year or so. But the pre-made rigs...you're getting the cards (typically) at the manufacturer's suggest retail price. Over time, it's very rare for prices to go down. The manufacturers of these cards will undoubtedly look at sales and say, "Well, sales to non-crypto-currency miners has gone down, but we made 2x as much!" (I have no idea if that's what the case actually is - that's just what I think they'll say, to justify an increase of their MSRP. In short, for a pre-made rig, buy it now, maybe catch something on sale for the holiday.

All the dude needs is a new hair cut...and a damn lot of therapy.

Now you see the purpose of my post in the first place. Per the AH - Running and Sprints are a different category than Running, yet they convert to each other, but they don't all slot in the same powers. A bit dizzying (for me) until you take a step back and have another look.

It's just pure conjecture on my part. If you look at the bottom right corner of each "card", you'll see a fraction. Some number over 218. So, that leads me to assume there are 218 different things we can get.

I can't say with certainty - not a "Pigg Diver" by any stretch. But, I spoke with @Voltor, who given his thorough affinity for all things badging, and he stated if you don't see them, clear the room of nearby mobs, back out of draw distance, and either log off, or wait a couple minutes, come back and see if anything changes. After 3-4 times clearing mobs, they're likely to appear. So, I did just this, and was rewarded appropriately with the spawns I was looking for.

Well, Christmas is coming up! Wonder if my stocking is big enough for three....