Ukase

Congratulations! You have confirmed this is a problem. Now, the only solution is for players to stop worrying about their own fun, and to join whatever is being recruited for in that moment. Right?

When I was suffering through the Ouro badges on my characters, I tended to aim for DPS, aggro management and buffs. The ATs used are irrelevant. All I aimed for was one from those 3 categories. If we were allowed to play 4 accounts on the same shard, I would have added debuffs.

I would guess they use email or a phone to reach a specific contact they have.

Well, upon reading Voltor's guide, I think this is working as intended. So, you'd have to run the arc 2x. Arrest him both times. That would fill the vigilante points to 10. Each run gives you 20 merits. Then run the morality for 40 merits. Each run, if you take 5 extra seconds and look to skip M1dway (the trip to Striga - which I neglected to skip 2x cuz I was clicking through to quickly) takes about 10-15 minutes. A time saver for me was using Mark & Recall on the first mission. It only saved me 20 seconds or so, but I told myself it saved me some aggravated maneuvering. There's a smaller door you have to get through, and sometimes, there's too many npcs to get through it quickly. Still, 15 minutes x 2, plus the morality, that's not bad. 80 merits in 40 minutes. Not nearly as good as a hami or a tinpex, but if you're solo, you can break up these activities and afk and such. Not too bad.

So, on my third run with this. Thus far, I've killed Marcus, Returned Marcus, now Arrested Marcus. And I want to say this happened the previous runs, but I didn't notice it until now. I check my alignment progress and see this: I just had done the 25 vigilante missions prior to this loop hero badge effort, and my progress was at 5 vigilante points. Now it's full. And, according to my SG computer, I can "buy" the morality mission and I can only presume when I complete it, I'll get paid my 40 merits. Is this WAI ? If so, this little arc, taking 10-15 minutes to run (faster once you run the 2nd time) is a lot more profitable than just 20 merits.

I appreciate the list. On one character, I was catching it up on the badges since page 7; and I was doing Ashling Corlett...whatever her name is. And I got the opportunity to earn 2 vigilante alignment points. I foolishly thought they'd count. They don't. Just an FYI for folks who might have thought the same thing. Gotta run two more.

The key for me in this question is "relatively stress free". Now, I'm been on a meteor farm with a blaster at +4/8. Killing speeds were nice. But it was NOT relatively stress free. First, because I've never been on any blaster that could get resists much higher than 60%, and still have any kind of defense, I felt I had to start with some inspirations. Having to use the insp combination macros, while keeping my eyes on my health and my defense and resist stats...well, it just wasn't worth the effort. I can just park the brute in the middle and play the characters I wanted to play on my other account while that was happening. So, for me - the answer is no. Someone smarter and more creative than me, with a different appreciation for paying keen attention may come along with a better answer. I would suggest making the un-preferred fire tank or brute, putting burn on auto, then tabbing out to the ranged character you prefer to play. Then tab back in, sell the drops and repeat.

Sadly (or not) they can only done through ouro by kheldians. Unless there's some specific alignment, like you have to be a hero, as opposed to a vigilante. But nothing else works like that, so I'm thinking it's not the case.

This is an interesting thought. There may be some pitfalls that I can't think of, but it's super interesting wondering how a given player would design their own specific enhancement.

In case anyone was curious about this gladiator pet, here's what it looks like: I was taking an alt through there to get the motes, so I don't have to be a burden on the speedy lab runs, and can just focus on fogs and ran right into him. Didn't really get to make much use of him, as it was just an exploring/badge run.

just an observation, it takes about 7-10 minutes to get those 5 EB defeat badges. Given the frequency of people leaving, then rejoining, it's my guess motivated folks with free time are going to earn these on every character that can. It's been a week, I think. I've gotten over 800 Prismatics - just from the event. That doesn't even include the labyrinth of fog and the named GM kills. But, I would also conclude that people are either using them as intended, or like me, hoarding them for either future use or future sales. I would have thought the price was going to plummet, but that has not been the case.

There's a saying somewhere, "Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent". Well, nobody ever accused me of being wise, so here I go: The truth is the answer. And the truth is how good/bad a corruptor is depends on some variables. Some are fixed variables - like the base damage of a given attack. Some are not fixed variables, but well...forgive the term, varying variables - like player build and skill. Your ability to play a given character is not the same as mine, nor is mine the same as yours. So - that's one difference in outcome. (when to use the debuff, when to re-fire the debuffs, etc) The build you have would be different than mine. That's another difference in outcome. The corruptor scourge mechanic is really one of the more interesting gimmicks in game, if you ask me. For one, it doesn't require a player to do anything special, other than just survive long enough to get the npc to less than 50% hp. The rest, the game does for you. During this event, I have solo'd GMs with a fire/atomic blaster, and a fire/natty corruptor and an ice/cold corruptor. For the most part, these are mostly popular choices. Most would probably like fire/fire over fire/atomic, but I like the sustain on atomic better due to decreased duration of mez attacks. And, at least in my experience - while the blaster might dish out a higher damage number in mids - a lot has to do with what is being attacked. How resisted is that fire/ranged damage? Does the damage do anything to negate the regen of an npc that has over 70k hitpoints? No? How fast does that npc regen? Then, we consider the various corruptors with the tools at their disposal: -regen (you don't have to hit them as much, because their health doesn't regen as much) -def (you hit them more easily, that is, you hit more because you don't miss as much) -HP (you don't have to do as much damage because their hitpoints have been reduced) -recharge (they don't hit you as often, more survivability for you) -tohit (they don't hit you as often, more survivability for you -res (each attack you do does more damage) The -res is why so many players try to squeeze in -res procs in their attacks that can benefit from them. (where the proc will reliably fire) When the corruptor can reduce the npc resistance, the extra dps from a blaster doesn't mean so much, because the blaster doesn't have it, unless they have a proc or an epic power that can do this, like melt armor. But that power's debuff lasts less than a minute, but the recharge takes much longer. (pending on external recharge buffs, of course) Whereas the corruptor's ability to debuff multiple targets can really shine. Some players are skilled enough with their builds and their manual dexterity and creativity (skill!!!!!) to outdo a blasters damage, consistently. Not by much. But most leaders, when encountering difficult content will prefer a well-played corruptor over a well-played blaster far more often than not. As for the rest of us non-highly skilled players, that's the beauty of a PUG. You never know what you're going to get. We wouldn't have the weekly adventures of Snarky without this beauty of PUGs. I would encourage you rethink your position. There are some serious flaws in your logic.

I wasn't referring to the comparison of Croatoa Eochai and Jack vs Event Eochai and Jack; I was comparing the zone DE GMs to the Event GMs. They have the same hitpoints and while they differ in their attacks, my characters haven't experienced any difference in combat difficulty between the two.

For me, the map is perfectly good. I appreciate your efforts!

It's not farming I'm after. I merely pose the question when I realized that the effort to tackle a named GM is the same effort to tackle an un-named GM. It just seems to me the rewards should be the same for both, because it's essentially the same risk. I get how some folks find the idea of repetitive cooperative tasks for rewards is a bit icky, as it doesn't align with how they would like to play. Some folks would rather talk about pokeman in Pocket D for several hours and others would prefer to find just the right costume piece. Me - I want to stack loot and hoard it. There's a lot of options in this game, I'm just posing the question. Take note that it's not in the suggestions section, as I'm not sure how I even feel about it. But I know myself well enough to know that I'm greedy. So, yeah, I want monstrous aethers as well as merits if the effort and risks are the same. Why wouldn't I? and, more interestingly - why don't you, if you're inclined to tackle Eochai in Croatoa, why wouldn't you want the same rewards for Eochai outside of Croatoa? I grasp that in the event, enough GMs spawn (and re-spawn fairly quickly) to make up for the lack of MAs. But my mind is still a bit hung up on the fact that the unnamed GMs don't give any rewards to speak of, despite carrying the same risks. And yeah, I grasp that the risk isn't really there unless you seek it out, as they're far removed from most players usual traffic patterns. Still, I thought the question was worth asking.

Goddess took a collection of us through the labyrinth once again, and then onto the murder room. Things were fine, until they weren't. I killed a gladiator, tabbed - and then saw Kronos. And Caleb. A lot of large GMs. Pretty much a league wipe at that point. Not sure if anyone made a report, so I figured I'd put it out there. I don't think this is by design...but then again, it's Halloween. I'd have preferred a Twix bar.

I hear players complain about this in instanced raids. I don't have the problem myself, but the league describes it like they're in the mapserver event.

Much appreciated - thought you'd like to know that I now see a message about siphoning off some of the power of the labyrinth. Now, it's possible that message splashed on the screen as it does now, but I'm certainly noticing it now, whereas before, I didn't.

Recently, I happened across Eochai in Crey's Folly. No big deal, just part of the ol' Hallowe'en event. After broadcasting for a few minutes, I decided to just solo it and soon after pocketed my 6 reward merits and continued about my merry way. And then I thought, "Hey - no monstrous aethers!". That's not a big surprise, nor really a big deal. But, it's not lost on me that when there's a choice between Kraken in Perez, or an event Eochai (as opposed to the Croatoa Zone version) people will zip after Kraken every time, presumably because of the MAs. At least, when recruiting, that's my anecdotal experience. While helping a ToT league tackle Jack, there were no shortages of other non-named GMs. Sadly, the only thing these big bags of HP and Foot Stomps give are an EoE. A Stropharia 70679 HP is the same as the Event version of Eochai, 70679. I get that it's an event; so there should be some extra goodies. But what about the non-event, unnamed Monsters, of the Devouring Earth variety? In the Abyss and the Hive, I certainly grasp why they don't give merits. But the ones on Monster Island? The ones on the little islands way out in PI? Shouldn't they also give some goodies besides the EoE?

You're not wrong. I love having Soldiers on my teams. It's just hard to stick next to them the whole time. (sometimes)

I'm not familiar with this player; but I feel like the new CoC update must be having players like this in mind.

So, players get teleported in certain instances: Magisterium Trial, Chimera will teleport random (I think) players to his location. In the Advanced Mode Lady Grey, there are occasions where a player is "teleswapped", where you're teleported to them. Not sure why it's called tele-swap - maybe they send one of their goons in the player's place. Things are far too chaotic for me to discern if that's the case. The teleport protection from the pvp IOs, if you read the fine print, they just offer a 20% chance of protection from teleport, not a guarantee of protection from it.

I mentioned why it's a peeve - because of how hard I work to ensure I'm pulling my weight to the best of my ability. I feel like I bought a thesaurus with nothing but blank pages. I don't have any words to describe how unsavory I think running around without enhancements is. There is just no excuse good enough. I should add, that I do get it to a small degree: you're on a lowbie, doing ToT, and the levels are coming fast. And with the buffs to recharge, and other attributes, you probably don't miss the enhancements. It's just not anything I could feel comfortable doing. Occasionally, I do a drop challenge, where I can't use any enhancements, except for what drops. It helps me get excited over the smallest things, like an end mod invention recipe. (which are more rare than very rares, anecdotally) But - when I do those challenges, I don't team with anyone, because I just couldn't allow myself to burden someone else with my twisted idea of amusement. It is not my intent to shame anyone for playing in a fashion that's cool with them - so you continue to do things the way you do them. Don't worry about me. I rarely join the leagues anyway.

Seriously - why? Why would you do this? If you're on a team, doesn't matter if you're level 5 or 50. You should be courteous enough to have at least SOs slotted. You've played long enough to know better, and you can certainly afford it by now. Sorry - this is a major peeve of mine. I go out of my way to get what I think are the best enhancements I can because I'm only a slightly better than mediocre player. I need all the help I can get. And you're running around with nothing? That makes no sense in my world.

"Lone Wolfing"...ultimately, how I feel about it would depend on my mood at the time. Sometimes, I'm perfectly fine with whatever happens in a mission. And sometimes, I want to reach through and smack people. To me, when I'm on someone else's pug, and I see most of us follow the team lead, and I see a brute or scrapper or whatever go their own way, I ask myself...what is it they seek to accomplish? Now, this is an important question. Generally, when the team is all together except that one person who went East instead of West with the rest of us, it's a kill all or kill most. Otherwise, myself and everyone else would just be zipping to the back of the map to kill the boss and move on to the next mission. Teams tend to have synergy. The player by themselves, they're probably having their own fun, and thinking that they are capable. Or, they could be wondering why everyone went the other way instead of following them. Hard to say when folks don't communicate. But, when you have buffs, debuffs, aggro management and dps all in the same area, the killing goes faster. It just does. That's how the synergy of mobs being debuffed, and players being buffed works out. The player by themselves - they might think they're saving time - and if it's a speedy effort, then it might be saving time. Hard to say, really. But if it's a kill most, kill through - they're likely not. They can type whatever they want, but they're not saving time. If they were with the team, the mobs would fall that much faster. Now, I suppose there is such a thing as "overkill", where the case might be made to have the team break off. Really tough to say, because who is standing there with a spreadsheet and a stop watch and analyzing the hitpoints for each npc, the damage dealt and calculating the amount of overkill? Not me. And not you, either. If you say you are, good luck convincing me, because I won't call you a liar, but I will think it. You might guess there's overkill, and you might be right. Ultimately, the answer just isn't that important. The goal for me is typically the reward merits and/or the badge. I don't care about XP. I don't care about INF. At least, not usually. I'm the one who, as a level 12 in patron mission, will stealth to Dr. Q and get the stupid mission over with; even my lowbies could not give two spits about XP. It will come. No need to sweat it. So, lonewolfing to me is good or bad, situationally. On a speedy run, go for it. On a kill most/kill through, I think you're just showboating, OR and this can be true often in kill most/kill through teams, you're a super good player, and your team is overly cautious with that stupid trinity tendency where the tank wants to be buffed before heading into each mob. But, as a slightly better than mediocre player, I'm going to recognize this and probably help you out. I have no patience for a tank that wants buffs before heading into battle - unless it's like an advanced mode TF or something.