Ukase

I just got Tankbuster on a character, and I remember clearly - just yesterday, dusting a character off after parking it at various locations - and now have all the day job badges - except for Vanguard, though I've satisfied the requirements for it - but only just this minute dinged 35 to go get it. The map server event certainly helped with leveling! I'd done a nemesis event yesterday for about 50 fakes and both posi 1 & 2 and got gearsmasher, I just needed Freak tanks and the rest of the fakes. So, I set out to clobber some freak tanks - and they counted double. So, when one rezzed, I got to kill it twice, but I got credit for 4! I thought maybe I'd missed something in the patch notes about it - and as we all know, sometimes the patch notes are lengthy - easy to miss something like that. I figured the Badger site would show any changes to it - but maybe not - but saw no changes there. Not complaining, just sharing the info. Seems like I would have picked up on this change somewhere, so maybe it's a bug. No idea.

I recently created a character, an SS/Dark Brute. I couldn't quite decide on a name, so I sifted through pages of alts and found a name of a character I hadn't played in over 500 days, respec'd the enhancements out, and gave that name to this new character, Massive Man. Stole 250 prismatics from an alt, and made him as small as I could. I even put some stupid jokes about being short in a few macros, just for kicks and grins. Probably more kicks than grins, in hindsight. Prior to the creation of this character, I had heard people talk about how they hate the rage crash. I have played several SS characters; some brutes, some tanks. And I am familiar with this "crash" term, but I've never really suffered from it. I did suffer from it with Massive Man. And I mean, truly suffered. On all my other SS characters, I never even knew the Rage crash came with -end. I don't really watch stamina unless I'm out of endurance, if that makes any sense. Whereas, damage bonus is a combat attribute I monitor. As mentioned above, some armors just don't sync well with the crash, particularly the endurance drop. And I can tell you, Dark Armor is one of those sets that doesn't like it. The damage aura sucks endurance at .52 per second. Consistent with other damage toggles, but for whatever reason, poor slotting choices, whatever the reasons were, my character didn't like the rage crash. He has cardiac now, and has joined my list of alts that doesn't notice the rage crash anymore. I noticed something else, too. The -damage, yeah, that stinks, but it's only for 10 seconds. Most of the time, I could time my clearing of a group to where the crash would happen after clearing a group. But it still sucked, because I knew the end crash was coming, which meant being sure I had a 3/4 to full end bar so I don't suffer any ill-effects. But, what I noticed was that damage procs don't seem to listen to this -damage condition. So, with uppercut procced out, I could use handclap, then uppercut, and then a heal whether I needed it or not, and then another uppercut (both uppercut shots were fairly weak compared to normal - but damage is still damage) and then I could go nuts again. So, yes, of course, Super strength is kind of lame if you're using the armors that are fairly end heavy and slot without concerns about endurance. (although, I used more unslotters with this character than any I can think of, in search of end recovery, or max end, or endurance discount set bonuses) The theft of essence proc is a life-saver, but in my experience, slotting the full set of 6 in Twilight grasp limited the firing of the proc, but I digress. Foot Stomp is really the only thing that's super about this set. Double stacked rage is great. And if you can have enough accuracy to hit with Sands of Mu more than you miss, and you have an armor like Fire, and can use consume (from level 8 on a tank), then you can probably handle the rage crash fairly easily. Or, if you can handle the bittersweet nostalgia of regen, perhaps SS/regen could work for a brute. But, every set has some kind of issue. If Rage were just build up...eh, I don't know that the set would be worth playing. Maybe it's a mind-set thing. I think SS is just fine, you just have to be careful what you're pairing it with. I have an SS/Bio brute that's fantastic and is oblivious to any crash.

if you're in a mission and you see the announcement, and are trying to finish the mission before you go, I agree, 5 minutes isn't much time. But, to my mind, it's enough time to get to any zone you want to get to. I can probably make an alt, and get to any zone I want in 5 minutes. Granted, I'd use the random costume generator, and I'd have to make a pit stop to START/p2w for a jet pack, but since there are no GMs in the shard (aside from Halloween) I think 5 minutes is plenty. Atlas to Ouro to Echo:DA only takes a minute. (then you broadcast and take another 30 seconds to get to the elevated platform where Adamastor is) The far reaches of Nerva to Croatoa for a Rogue would also only take a minute.

I forgot all about that!

So...by now, most of us have seen the mini-me costume, where you spend 250 prismatics to get a toggle/costume of a miniature of your character...sort of. I think the head and cape stay the same size, but everything else seems to get smaller. I think it would be quite amusing for a teammate to pick up a mini-me teammate and throw them into the npcs for some sort of unspecified damage type.

That's a fair point, put most amusingly.

It took me forever to get this all in one screen shot. And, we can see by the seconds, that I opted to use my knockout blow on the scanner at 19:23:53. Yet, Rage crashed just 3 seconds before. Now, the 14.48 pts of damage, that makes sense, given the rage crash. But the procs all fired - and I'm thinking I've inadvertently circumvented the -9990 damage with the procs. Again, I don't know if this is a bug, or WAI. But, in case it's a bug, here ya go.

I go out of my way to not use lores because I figure the slower we go, the more chance some stragglers have to maybe get a hit in. And yeah, I'm not a patient guy either. But, to me 5 minutes is a fair amount of time to wait for someone to notice the event, travel to a train or sg port, and pop in zone. Another 90 seconds, and I wouldn't have thought twice about it. I just feel bad for the folks who arrived in what I consider a timely fashion only to learn the GM is down already.

I've been thinking about the market for some time, mainly since I stepped back from doing anything market related, with this voice in my head saying, "Dude, you have enough inf to make a great build for each character you might make if you filled all the available character slots." But, I didn't get that much influence by torturing myself. I got it because in many ways, the market is more interesting than some of the content available. As items on the market are getting cheaper, it just means I have even more disposable influence than I had before. At least, for now. And if things get more expensive, I'll adapt and make more. But, there's something concerning me with a small part of the market - prismatics. Have you guys ever actually spent the prismatics to make a mini-version of your character? Since last Halloween, when the ToTing was going on, and everyone was getting 10 prismatics per character, and when Scrapyard was being clobbered a lot, and prismatics would drop randomly during story arcs, I have been stockpiling these since I bought a bunch for 100M just to get some badges Looking at their current price, 3M each seems like chump change. A mini-me requires 250 prismatics. So, 750M if you don't have any. Again, chump change for most of us. (unless we had to repeatedly buy them for each character - that could add up, but I still think I can outpace that, if properly motivated.) I got to thinking - GMs are dropping Monstrous Aethers. We need 3 of them to make one prismatic, if that's even what folks are doing with them. To me, it seems like the price has stabled, for now, but I am wondering how many of these are going to routinely hit the market each day. 20? 50? It can't be that many. 2000 people playing, I don't know the drop rate, but I thought it was around .02%, not to be confused with 2 percent. It could be where I read it - that person was confused about representing a percentage with a decimal point. Not real sure. But unless the folks who are running the hard mode TFs are listing theirs, I just don't think there will be a lot of these - because - wait for it- people like the mini-me "costumes". Mine is a hoot, especially uppercut. His little arm doesn't even reach their chin - it's like a bad wrestling match! I looked just before the emergency maintenance. I think it was about 2700 of them available. I was fortunate; I didn't need to buy any. But, I see this as a section of the market to keep under observation. I would expect the price of these to rise a bit, closer to 5m if things stay the same. I no longer see the 1500 number on Excelsior. It's barely breaking 1K when I look to see. I think we're going to see some prices go up some tiny percentage - maybe 5-10% in the short to mid-run, over the next 3 to 6 months. Summer is coming for most of us, so that should mean people are spending more time outside, and less time playing. The only thing that might suppress this is Yomo, or others like Yomo, liquidating their inventory. I could certainly be wrong, and I hope I am.

I only have one minor issue with Atta, and Frostfire as well. You get the mission for Atta. Let's say you're level 13. If you're on a team, and you're killing just what's in your way, depending on the size of the team - let's say your set to 0/8. (you're on a full team) By the time you get 1/2 way up the map, you're level 14 and change, if not level 15. And by the time you see Atta, you're close to 16, if not there. And Atta is still level 13 or 14. And if you boost it to +4/8, because the xp is so much better, you pretty much have the same issue. Every now and then, I get an atta map where the mobs in the back of the map are +2 higher than the mobs in front. But it's not always like that.

I would wait and see if the problem persists after this emergency maintenance.

I never realized this; I knew there was a 24 hour format and a 12 hour format, but since I liked the 12 hour format, I never clicked through to see there was a 24H with seconds. Thanks!

I love it when I learn new stuff! Thanks!

So...this isn't really the end of the world. But, I know this happens to people quite a bit. I was on my character "Massive Man". Fun character to play. Even have some short jokes in a few macros, because I used some prismatics for the mini-me costume. I'm in Ouro, trying to decide if I want to do some McIntyre missions, or some Maxwell Christopher. I see the event message about Kraken in Perez. I immediately use my LRTP and I'm in Perez. It took me all of 15 seconds to find him. But...I'm level 43. I know from experience, I don't want to be exemplared if I'm 50, just give me or another 50 the star, or pick one of my missions. (if I have one. At 50, I tend not to have any missions, except old ones, saved for a specific purpose. But I digress) Now, you can see below, it's a pity there aren't seconds in the time stamps. Because it was less than 40 seconds between the event message and my typing /loc to then cut and paste it into broadcast chat. Note the time of the reward. Easily, within 2 minutes. At the slowest possible time to find and kill him, 2:28:01 he spawns, and 2:30:59, he's defeated. So, certainly no more than 3 minutes. Is this how we do things now? You can see two players looking for kraken. I mention I'd invite, but I'm only 43. I get an invite from someone, and I warn them that someone is ambitious and starting already. Before I finish typing that sentence, Kraken is half dead. I have no idea why anyone with a team of heroes brings out a lore pet, but it looked like we were doing Really Hard Way with all those pets. In any event - I got my lick in for the loot, but no badge. So, I have to try again later. I get it. But why are we/they in such a damn hurry? It's not going to cost anyone to wait a couple of minutes for a few more folks to zone in. Not everyone is going to have access to Perez with LRTP like I do. There might have been some lower level characters wanting a shot, too. I don't know who started in on him. It took me by surprise. I barely got a shot in before he was dead, and I feel like I'm the one that found him first. I know there's no solution, but I'm sharing this so maybe, someone will wait a few minutes for other folks to get there. That's all.

This reminds me of a movie where a janitor tells young Pondo Sinatra in much fewer words, the more success you have with women, the more success you'll have with women. (paraphrased for a pg audience) People play on Excelsior for one primary reason only - there's more people playing on Excelsior. Perhaps it's because Stan Lee used to use the word in his sign-off. It is certainly part of what attracted me to the server when it first opened. I did a posi 2 this week, and was level 14 when it started. When it was over, (i had 2xp buff running), I was level 20. With XP that easy to get running normal content, I don't see 2xp on Indom as incentive. Increasing drop rate for various items..well, maybe, but maybe not. It would likely be a short term solution to a long term problem. If purples dropped like rares, yes, a fair number of people would be on Indom to collect. But, once they have what they want...they may go back to excelsior. Or, everyone runs to Indom, and then Excelsior is in the same shoes that Indom is in now. I don't pretend to have a solution. But then, I don't really see it as a problem. The shards are identical. I guess what I don't get is why the folks on Indom who want more people to team with don't just play on Excelsior? Granted, it'd be annoying have a base with all your stuff on another shard, I get that. But, we get a fair number of transfers. Use an alt with access to your loot, load it up and transfer it with the loot.

This is so interesting to me. I've done Posi 2 a fair number of times on a team. I've teamed quite a bit in other scenarios, I promise. I have never, ever, ever not been able to see what I was doing because of any other player or their powers. I've had so many mobs packed in, I couldn't find a specific critter without a macro - like the KHTF. Hard to see Mary amidst all those witches. What's interesting, is I know the OP didn't just make up this story. It happened. So, what I'm interested in is how I can "see" what they were looking at. I know it's not anything we'd normally think about, but take a screenshot if this kind of thing happens again. It makes me wonder if what I see when I look at the screen is the same thing that everyone else sees. How much difference does a graphic card really make? I'm not about to make a second rig and load up two accounts and have them stand side-by-side just to see. But, to the OP's rant: Yes, you were being clearly unreasonable. I mean, there's no question about it. Turn off hover. Why? Because you can't see anything? My hover isn't what's making you not see anything. It's your camera distance. Granted, in a cave, it can be impossible to pan out, but if you change the angle - you can. We don't need to see the white's of Rollister's eyes to put a fire ball in 'em. We just need to target him. And, as we all know, cycling through Tab will do that. Sorry, OP. While I have no idea why anyone would want to hover in a cave (or anywhere else) when they can just use sprint or slide, or a jet pack, but it's a playstyle thing. I'm not going to turn off hasten or Arctic Fog, or my Combat jumping to appease someone else unless they have a reason better than "I can't see anything". There has to be some other issue here. I cannot fathom any power effect being so obnoxious as to impede the view for teammates. Maybe an Auro? I've seen some of those that were pretty bad. Never kept me from doing anything, tho.

I think most of us know to go to Brainstorm to test...or is there another secret shard we're supposed to use? Also - it's easy to say "help out with testing"...but there's a fair number of folks, myself included, where the only way I think of to test something is to just play the game the way I'd play it on Excelsior. If there's something specific to be tested, that should be mentioned, and how it should be tested. Back on live, there was a chap who may or may not have gotten in trouble with the Paragon Devs. I think he did, because he found a bug and may or may not have exploited it before reporting it. It's all hearsay, so no idea how accurate it is. The dude was on a pb, and apparently, he was able to put a lot more than just 6 slots on a power. And it was well before ED, so he had like 22 slots on one of the nova form blasts and supposedly one shot hami. Again, that's just what I heard. No idea if it's true, but it doesn't matter. It shows a scenario where someone finds a bug/exploit just by training up and proceeds to use it in a fashion quite unintended. Most of us know the limit is six slots, so it would never occur to me to try to get more. (I'm quite sure that bug was addressed quickly) I'm happy to test. I just need to know if there's something specific, and if there's a method to use when testing, if there's some sort of proper format for reporting any findings to make it more readable, etc.

When I press M to move the inspiration to the Auction house, nothing happens. (The AH window is open when I'm doing this, if that's not apparent.) When I hit D to delete the insp, THAT key works. And as you can see, the letter M does function on my keyboard. A very minor thing, I can still click and drag to the AH, but the error does seem to be repeatable.

So, according to the farm guides, the tanker is the best farmer, due to the changes in AE that happened...page 5, I think. A brute can still hold their own in a farm, but the build needs to focus less on dps and more on hitpoints and regen - and in many cases, will need the HP buff from two of the passive accolades. That said, the brute has a distinct advantage and that's the fury bar.

About phase shift. It only lasts 30 seconds. It only takes 1/2 a second to cast, and another 1/2 second to activate. A lot can happen in the interval of time post-nuke and pre-phase shift. The worst thing that can happen is you get clobbered. It may be worth trying in certain scenarios. Usually, a nuke kills everything except maybe the boss when you're facing even-conned mobs. Facing +2 or +3, some of that may depend on slotting, external damage buffs like Assault, etc. But, against +4s, well, you may not get all of them and just do half damage. While your phase shifted for another 29 seconds...all you can do is run away or hope your teammates have a solution. I have a clear memory of being back on live around issue 3 or 4. I used phase shift to avoid some CoT. They just camped at me until the toggle dropped. But I can't recall if the toggle dropped because of some 30 second timer, or if I ran out of endurance. Now, the end use is only 18/s. Hardly worth noticing as toggles go, but after a nuke, it could be an issue for some characters struggling with endurance. Let us know how that goes. Sounds interesting.

Sorry - I've got to echo ice corruptor. The reason why ice gets the nod over fire is because two are newer players. The hold from freeze ray is a very quick animation. When you're newer, using a simple hold like Freeze Ray is pretty nice. And some of you are talking about fire like it's in a whole different tier of dps. It's not. It might slightly eke out fire. Add to that - there's blizzard. Yes, it's DoT, as opposed to burst damage like inferno, but it's also a Targeted AoE so our newer players don't have to enter melee unless they want to do so. For the secondary, they could go natty, rad, dark - I'm not sure it matters that much. Empath is straightforward, but as mentioned, some of the better powers come later. Rad's only real draw backs are the lack of any status protection like Clear Mind, (but with AM, the holds/mez don't last as long) and the somewhat awkward time spent placing lingering radiation and radiation infection and enervating field - if they take all 3 - on the stronger bosses or AVs. Dark is a fine secondary...3 tar patches? 3 dark servants? 3 Twilight Grasps? one might miss, but surely not both of the other two. I enjoyed my ice/dark corruptor a lot more than my fire/dark corruptor. Not real sure why, but I think it was the holds the ice primary has. From where I sat, the dps is pretty much the same. There was never an incident where I thought, "Gee, my fire corruptor would have killed this npc by now". but, opinions will vary. If it were me, I'd try to convince the other two to make 3 different characters each. That is, each player creates the same 3 characters. Play each for a few missions, and see how they like them. Some folks are better geared towards melee; some ranged, some both. Some folks are better off with a secondary that would have buffs that last 4 minutes, or might fare better with debuffs, like dark. But, that's just me.

No, no very rare there. Those are just both rare. But, still fortunate, I suppose.

So, I clobber some council for Stephanie Peebles. One turned out to be a boss. Not only did I get two recipes, (seemingly) but both from the same set. I can't say I've ever noticed that happening before. Not sure what's more rare - both from the same set, or two recipes for one defeat. Or is it lag from the previous kill?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I can't prove it, but I know with 100% certainty my event messages said Jurrasik was spotted in Crey's Folly. At the risk of coming off harshly, be sure you have hero zone event messages enabled in one of your chat boxes. Sometimes, when we switch alignments, the game doesn't automatically adjust these for us, if they ever do. I'll be keeping you in mind if I see him and give you a shout.

I have no idea why I never thought of this. Imagine! The first place winner gets something like 100 Million, and I give the one I like 1 billion. Now that's my idea of fun! lol