Ukase

I've led them before and will be happy to lead them again if things are full in hive 1 and I can't get in. Or maybe if even if I can.

Thanks. I am afraid I'm a bit of an over-achiever. I've already t-4'd that character and it sits in Ouroboros while I'm playing an ice/atomic blaster. With this new one, I went for max hp and recharge - and honestly - defense is better. At least for me. I'd rather have 1700 hitpoints and soft-cap, then 1847.3 and 27% defense. Maybe it's all in my head. Who knows. Just seems like my ice/ice and fire/fire are simply ...more survivable and better than these other combos. I've never used Force of Will or Force Mastery, for that matter. Most of my blasters go with Ice Epic for hoarfrost or Scorpion Shield for s/l/e defense. There's just nothing in it Force Mastery that reads like it's worth taking compared to the t-8's and t-9's in the secondary in those later levels. That's probably just me, tho.

I saw someone recruiting for a Lady Gray TF. In the lfg, it says you get a Vanguard DNA Metamatrix or 37 merits. Crazy fool that I am, having just reached 50 on an alt, I thought I'd join for the Shard component. And on the reward table is a choice of a Hero 1 Dna Sample, or the merits. I chose the merits over a component only worth 4 shards, as opposed to one worth 12, which is what the Vanguard DNA Metamatrix is worth. I know it would be low on your priorities, but I think it would be an easy fix for the tool tip to be corrected. With accurate information, we can all make better decisions.

Um...here's what I did. I finished in 4:04. Yes, use team teleport to skip the cave/tunnels. Use your sg buff station to invis you - even if you do have a celerity in super speed like I did. This way, when you click, you will still have 25 feet stealth radius. You should also set your diff to 0/1 so you're not wasting time killing more than you need to. There are a number of obelisks to click, each down a path with some mobs you can ignore. You might need to kill some, depending on your defense stats. If they're low, take a luck before you click. Usually, they miss, even if they do see you. But with the sg invis buff, it's not an issue unless you straight out attack them and lose stealth. When you've clicked all the obelisks, you can hop over the mobs guarding the npc and just kill the two minions guarding him, ignoring the rest. I did that little trial 35 times for that partner badge, never once had to engage in a fight with anything other than two minions guarding the npc, except once, when my sg buff expired after an hour.

Copied two of my favorites to the server. Neither are able make incarnate materials for free. Tried logging off, re-validating, and back on, still no joy.

My main was and remains an ice/ice blaster. Well,..my badge toon was and is an ice/ice blaster. I don't really have a main anymore, because almost all of my characters do well. Some certainly are more impressive (to me) than others. A spines/fire brute named Fritter that can afk-farm at +4/8, but can also do ANY other content. Soft-capped defense, and just a smidge shy of capped s/l resist, but gets there if the hp gets too low because of the Reactive Defenses proc. Blister is my fire/rad Sentinel, and my first 50 on Homecoming. She was and is fun to play, but if not teamed, the damage just isn't that impressive. Resist capped at 75%, soft capped for melee defense, but I can get my blasters to soft cap defense with about 30-40% resist and they dish out so much more damage. I don't know Sentinels, but it is beyond me why their damage isn't on par with a scrappers. Same armors, so why not? It just doesn't make sense to me. Because they're ranged? So what?

The invention system has a tutorial! Of course some might forget some of it, or all of it. It has been a number of years! That's an entirely different scenario. It took me more than a minute to learn it back in live, and it took me a few minutes to re-learn it when the game came back.

I'm with you there! If I choose to give, whether it's time, inf, or whatever, it needs to be my idea, not someone else's.

Sorry to offend. Reasons why a good player might not know where PI is: 1. Only played redside and switched over at 50. 2. Really just loved ITF and kept doing them repeatedly. 3. Loved MSRs and did those and other mission contacts in RWZ. Maybe did an ITF, too. 4. Loved doing Numina, various shard TFs and just never got around to PI. 5. Always used mission tp, so never realized there were ferries that went to PI, Talos, IP and Striga. While all of these are plausible, they just aren't terribly likely. And candidly, if you are a new player, it stands to reason that you have much to learn and probably aren't that good of a player yet. There's a learning curve for everyone. I still learn things that make me a better player, every day! I do confess that my attitude towards such a player stems from a time when folks would HAVE to go to PI just to get level 45 and 50 enhancements. That's where Ghost Falcon was and is. You'd have to do a quick mission for him to show you his SOs available. So, before IOs came on the scene, anyone who was level 50 that didn't know where PI was had to have been powerleveled or running around without ANY enhancements for at least 7 levels. (aside from various drops - but no converters back then.)

The argument (philosophically) about the harms of PL'ing folks to 50 is not new. Who doesn't at least figuratively raise their eyebrows when a level 50 gets an invite to PI for a mission and they ask how to get there? There is a cost to having someone else - that's not your alt account - in a fire farm mission. It really is that simple. You get less inf, period. When I bring my alts in on my farms, almost routinely - the lowby is the one that gets the purples! Since it's my alt, I don't mind, but if it were some random person I was being nice to...I don't think I'd like to be THAT nice. The game mechanics suggest that just because that person was in there and got lucky doesn't mean that I would have gotten that drop if they weren't in there. I understand that. But, it wouldn't make me feel any better. But, that's just me - and that's a whole 'nuther can of beans, so to speak. For me, I have no beef with someone charging for a PL. My beef is with the people foolish/impatient enough to pay it.

Yeah, I moved a character to indom for A DAY for some pvp. When I t'fer'd my character back - someone took my name!

I'm by no means a historian, but I thought the whole reason of adding the extra servers was because with all those players, the zones were having a lot of lag, and in some cases, causing crashes of not only players, but the servers themselves. But - you bring up the social aspect. I thought I was teaming less because I was soloing more, not that I was soloing more because I was teaming less. I completely agree with you on the overall disappointment in having to wait to form a team or a league. I just don't think merging servers is necessary. At least, not at this time.

The truth is, if you give Corruptors a buff, then what? Then, nobody has a reason to make a defender. So they give defenders a buff. and so on. The truth is it all depends on how you play and slot them. I am very biased in favor of blasters, so I won't say anything about them.

Thanks to both of you. I did figure out that Drain Psyche has its benefits. The problem was finding large enough mobs. I am one to chase the merits from story arcs, so I was zipping through them at +1/1, so there were never many mobs to get much use out of it. But, on an MSR and a Market Crash, I saw I could max recovery without even slotting any end mod in it. So, the preventative medicine will stay. I think I'm going to forgo the leadership pool as I will most likely only be teaming for iTrials, and there are plenty of buffs in those. Clarion might be the choice for a lot of blasters, but I if my defense is softcapped, I much prefer Ageless. Not that I have to limit myself to one.

Below is the unfinished build of Zorba, a fire/mental blaster. Level 47 at present. Normally, I build a character, get the IOs, before I even create it. But, because I wasn't very familiar with the mental manipulation secondary, I've learned some things that lead me to believe I've picked some dog powers. Like confusion. It's a true turd for my style of play. Mental probe was useful up to about level 20, but haven't used it since. Subdual must be taken, but stopped using it at level 20 as well. Maybe earlier. It annoys me to no end to take fight and have boxing remain useles. The leadership pool has more utility, but there's no resistance layer of protection with it, and all those toggles...a blaster has to have endurance to dish out the punishment. Influence is no object. If some of you have some suggestions as to better ways to improve this build, I'd welcome the feedback. Sometimes, you get in the habit of doing things a certain way, and you lose out on different perspectives and ideas. The one thing is - I love Super Speed & Combat Jump. But it pains me to take Combat Jump and lose out on another power pool. If I had my way, I'd take Leaping, Fight, Leadership, Speed & Sorcery. But, the only reason to take Sorcery is to get Rune of Protection. It's an excellent power for preventing perma-hold/stun situations that would otherwise lead to defeat if you don't have a break free. But, we can only choose 4 pools. If I put an extra slot in hurdle, would it be about the same as having CJ when it comes to hopping up to the second floor? Guess I could toggle Ninja run... http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1412&c=658&a=1316&f=HEX&dc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

I do the same thing...except, sometimes when I grow weary of playing a character, I'll just burn the emps. I have a second account, so sometimes, I'll just let a "finished" character sit in just to get vet levels to get the emps. Most characters get t-4'd by vet level 9. Some sooner, some later, depending on the RNG. That leaves me with several vet levels to get 20 emps, and 15, etc. It adds up.

Leading iTrials is something I used to do weekly back in live. I don't know when it happened, or why, but it seems I've lost some of the patience I used to have for forming these things. With the Dark Astoria arcs, I don't get all the threads like I would in iTrials, but I can finish Heather Townsend's arc in less time that it would take to recruit and fill a UGT. (about 10 minutes) I logged in a new-ish 50, needing some commons, and some incarnate xp, and Lambda is one of the first iTrials, geared for newish 50's. I'm quite aware that some do "SLams", a speed lambda - ignore turrets, ignore street spawns, just clobber the required amount of npcs, kill the EB, get the temp powers, smack down the AV. Simple enough. Certainly not all - but this morning, a leader recruited for a lambda, not a SLam - yet upon entry, a SLam is what it was. And here is where I feel like I've failed the server: The leader had no idea it was a "SLam", nor did he have any experience ever clearing the streets or the turrets. This was all he knew. Maybe he/she was one of the new players that never played in live, I really don't know. So, I want to apologize for getting too impatient in my older age. I thought I would get more patient as I got older, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I am hoping that realizing how I've failed, I'll focus on being more patient and leading more trials with clear, concise instructions that aren't done by frantic typing in all capital letters. Macros are a great tool. All leaders that type less than 30 correct words per minute should use them, or if they absolutely must, use discord or some other voice service.

You neglected to mention a time. I know they do two on Saturday's in the Abyss at 3pm Eastern. But I haven't figured out why they don't do this in the hive, given the higher number of monsters. The spawning of hami takes a lot longer in the abyss, due to the way all the monsters are spread out. They also don't give very clear instructions, unlike Excelsior. At least, that was my experience. Still got it done.

I wouldn't sweat it. Like most, I think quitting a tf is a major no-no, to only be done in extreme circumstances - which I've yet to encounter. That said, when you have the knowledge that you have about your character, and familiarity with dealing with CoT, you already know that the issue was at that low level, you simply lack the slots to have enough protection in those circumstances. The only way I imagine you'd have come out of that would have been with a couple of savvy defenders/corruptors/controllers that had complementary buffs/debuffs. Here's a pro-tip: if you're a savvy player, go to p2w, get a summons pet and envenomed dagger. Do posi 1 & 2 solo. You'll finish almost as fast as a decent team, and faster than a lousy one, regardless of AT. (hit your sg base for an invis buff so you can stealth for an hour - you'll be done in 40 minutes easily.) Teaming can be fun. Likely a lot more fun with a good team - but it's hit or miss if you find it in LFG. After a time, you recognize certain globals and gain a small understanding of their in-game knowledge by their comments in the help channel. Then you'll know who to team with and who to avoid. That said, I'd rather team with a nice person who's new and ignorant than a savvy jerk.

My solution is to simply pan out, which broadens the peripheral view, so I rarely have to turn, unless I want to change directions.

Interesting. I like the idea of having an option to self-exemplar for whatever reason.

There is no such badge. Someone was yanking your chain.

I had this problem once. Turned out I had turned off soloing bosses. No idea why one thing has to do with another, but when I enabled soloing bosses, I got the AV to show.

I should have been more clear - I was looking at the superior winter IOs. Add a 3-3.5 m catalyst and charge about 6-7m more than the regular version.

I am not sure how to express my thoughts on what I'm seeing with regards to the Winter IOs. The price points just defy logic (to me). Just a couple of days ago, anyone with the time, inf and willingness could have gotten as many winter packs as they desired. Now, I see the IOs from those packs being sold for more than 2x of the sale (Chrismas) price of the pack itself. I'm not complaining, but I am wondering if some of our player base are just uninformed, or if one of you is playing a longer game and looking to buy up everything for 18-22m, only to resell them for 30+ in the future. I am hoping it's one or more of you playing a longer game, because if not, I just can't wrap my head around the crazy prices I'm seeing for things that simply should not cost as much as they're getting on the market.