Ukase

I wish I had worded my initial post differently. I don't think it was a matter of "Let's sneak one past ol' Ukase and see what he does!" or even anything like that. I think it was a matter of a volunteer staff making a choice that it wasn't important enough to post, or it just got overlooked. This is another reason to not do large updates. Just the TF would have been enough. Just the changes in lab would have been enough. Small, bite size chunks of new stuff more often, as opposed to huge amounts. But that's just my opinion.

So, I decided I'd had quite enough of the new stuff this morning, and went back to the new alt I'd made just prior to the surprise update. I only need the master run of the new tf (and the advanced mode required one). All in due time. So, on my lower character, someone asks the question about why they can't convert 4 uncommon incarnate components into a rare anymore? And 4 rares into a very rare. I quickly tab out, look through the patch notes. I saw no mention of this anywhere. I thought..Bug? Nah. Not bug. Further discussion on the help channel reveals it's not in the patch notes but on dev commentary in the HC Discord. Apparently, this conversion is still available, but has to be done by Prometheus, the tall bluish guy who gives Avid Reader badge. The reasoning is to spare the noobs from the inf sink. Well...I guess I'd have 125M more inf if this change had taken place 6 years ago. But, I'm not sure how I feel about being unable to do the conversion in the spot I'm at - as this is generally done prior to some event, and leaving the zone can cost you the opportunity. At best, it can delay things for a team that would prefer you swap one Destiny for another, and you need to convert some of the many drops into the components you need to build it. What bugs me is why in a discord dev commentary and not here in these forums? Discord has an awful name. It's a fine tool, but it's not where game change info should be listed. That should be in in the patch notes. What's the point of reading them if the information isn't there? I'll use discord to coordinate in game challenges. But going there to get any information about CoH is just not sitting well with me. Now I have to pore over the patch notes, and then pore over Dev Commentary on the Discord? Look, nobody's perfect. Least of all me. But this seems like a lack of a policy. Changes to the game should be articulated in the patch notes - not in a dev commentary (until sometime later, I imagine, in a discussion of the why, perhaps) I am grateful that the conversion option didn't go away. But I don't care for the inability to do this where I'm at. I'm sure there were other ways to make this change. Why not let the players learn the hard way like I did? I wasn't rolling in it back in 2019. And clearly the lesson took hold, because I still remember it. Now I do it because I have it and it's convenient, and I'd rather not burn the emps. I'm sure my take won't be popular. That's fine. Most of my takes aren't. But I don't agree with stealth changes like this. Given the nature of Brainstorm, this is a change I wouldn't have seen unless I was specifically looking for it. Nobody bothered to ask players what they thought. So, that kind of galls me a bit. Please, in the future, use the patch notes, with explanations as to why you changed things. The benevolence behind the change can certainly mitigate most misgivings behind it. But the sneaky part of changing it without telling anyone other those few who use discord often enough to surf through it - that's just not sitting well with me.

I use a custom window. And I had to remake mine for reasons unknown to me. (after the patch) It's always been finicky, and likes one corner or another, and as you say, seems to prefer the top left. When I log a character in, and move it where I want it - it will stay there for the duration of the gaming session. I do notice that every time I'm teleported, or zone, if I want a portion of the macros to remain visible, I have to re-scroll to that portion of the window. Not a super big deal. As for your problem, I can only advise you to remove it, and remake it, and perhaps it will revert to its previous still finicky, but less annoying state. But, sadly no guarantees.

I figured I'd just ask this down here rather than in general. For all I know, it's a bug. Hitpoints. On a few of my blasters, I have them at max hp. Nice blue numbers on my combat attributes that are monitored. Love to see it. But, I noticed, even with the level shifts those values don't increase. Shouldn't they? I imagine it's a lot for an antiquated engine to track, so I would understand why it doesn't, but seems to me the progression of those increases should continue as the character's levels increase.

Well, it's this week, I know that much. I imagine it will just continue in that rotation.

Well, in my head, I was imagining Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.

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.