Ukase

In my case, I just floated around and queued up attacks on the Prima. Eventually, I floated by close enough to knock the first one out. There were two - and they were using my character's body to play ping pong, lol. After I got the first one, the other was no problem. I just hadn't encountered it like this before. I usually just powered through it. Maybe Ice armor is just a little more susceptible at lower levels than other resist armors I generally play. No idea - but they're dead now.

I wish I'd seen this chatter on help. I would have told this Shield/* tank that he could indeed tank hami. But, it would require a specific build that maximized HP and regen over defense. A tank does not need a heal if there are two empaths or natties behind the tank. A couple of years ago, I don't know what possessed her to do it, but Trixie Chrome tanked hami with her scrapper. I think someone else - Freakenstein ended up tanking Hami on his blaster the next week. Any player can tank hami - with the right support around them. As someone who's tanked Hami, I would have been glad to tell this player that it's not a big deal at all. It's fairly mindless - as long as you remember to take your EoE. Well, I have to remember. I suspect there are some characters that don't even need the EoE. Team composition used to matter to a degree before IOs. Now, with the exception of Hard mode content, it doesn't. Well, it usually doesn't. Is that good or bad? Depends on whether you're the odd-man out, I guess. I heard one leader tell a player to log off his fire blaster for the advanced lady grey. To me, dps is dps. But, I guess if the npc you're trying to tackle has 90% resistance to fire, then my ice blaster sounds like a good solution! Still, I'm not sure I like this much attention to team composition. I don't think that's good for the players that play this game. At least, not all of us.

This made me chuckle.

Thank you. All I needed.

So, I was en route to getting High pain threshold on my new SS/Ice brute, so figured I'd try to do the family badge requirement organically, rather than hunt them down in Port Oakes. I felt like I had enough defense to survive, so I upped it to +1/8. (doing the story arc where you get to feed Lusca at the end if you choose) So, I ran into some problems. Well, one problem, several times. Certain bosses would spawn a Singularity that would proceed to move me where ever it felt like - but primarily - off the ground. Hard to foot stomp when you're not on the ground. The first time, I just enjoyed the ride until I finally got down to the ground and made a bee-line for the Prima boss and started bouncing him around. But, just around the corner, another two bosses and I felt like a ping-pong ball getting bounced around. Ice Armor has wet ice, which is supposed to be status protection. But, at lower levels, it's not that great, around 6-7 pts of protection from holds...but I wasn't held, just repelled/pulled. I tried a break-free, but that didn't do anything. It mainly annoyed me after the initial amusement. But I'd rather not have to aim for a particular target if I can help it, but rather the center of the group. What's the solution to this problem? Never noticed this from family before, but I'm usually not running /8 on family.

So..how you build a blaster varies with what you do with them when you play. Someone like me, who tends to solo a lot during the work-day, I don't have a tank to take the alpha, no kin to boost my endurance or attack speed. I have to be sufficient. I get to know my limitations pretty quickly. Some players would take my build and do poorly, and some would take it and do much better than I can. Player skill and knowledge do count for something in this game. How much that counts depends on the content you're doing. For me, there's a balance between DPS and survivability. Most blasters push the edge closer to dps, relying on teammates to shore up their survivability. It all depends on what you're comfortable with, as a player. Lately, my blasters have two builds. One has the attuned IOs for exemplaring, the other is the 50+5 build for hard mode stuff. If you told me three years ago, I'd be slotting for psionic defense and resistance, and using Control for my Hybrid, I'd have looked at you like you were crazy. Here's an example of some of my builds. Some more recent than others. For the Excalibonk, it's important to share that while it can handle "normal" content, it's not ideally suited for it. The pursuit of various combat stats left other areas lacking. And, the character also took advantage of various temps like Frost Bite, Winter Ward, and numerous SG empowerment buffs from the buff stations. Getting through that probably has more to do with team composition than any skill I had, that's for sure. The fire/fire build is an example of what I consider a "survival" over dps type of build. It's got Max HP, like the fire/mental, but the resists aren't even fussed with, but it's close enough to soft cap defense for s/l, and the recharge is sufficient to get out of most trouble I might find myself in. None of these builds are optimal. But, none of them are trash - at least, not for what I use them for. They may work for you; they may not. But you can look at various slots and take what you like and change what you don't. UkaseisMental- Blaster (Fire Blast).mbd Apache Fright-Water_Blast-Fire_Manipulation.mxd UkaseExcalibonk - Blaster (Ice Blast - Ice Manipulation).mbd Ukase Fire - Blaster (Fire Blast - Fire Manipulation).mbd

Thanks, I had no idea.

I'm not at all sure where to post this. The HC Wiki has an option to "register", log in and log out. I see no real reason for this feature unless you're going to contribute to it. But, for whatever reason, I'm unable to do so. I thought it might be helpful to catalog the various new arcs in Striga, but I get this: Well, it has been a few months. Seems like someone could be doing this, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Hey, life gets busy. But what's the point of registering and logging in if I can't contribute?

I also use lots of words when I post. Don't sweat it. I looked at your build, and I think you're overthinking it. The Savage Melee is a set that could use some attention, imo...but that's neither here nor there. It's probably the attention it did get that took hemorrhage and morphed it into hemorrhoid. But that's just my opinion, and those vary a lot in these forums. The folks that make these changes don't just do it to piss people off, they have a goal in mind, so I've learned that if I can't change it, just change my mind-set. Anyway, I think there's no real big mistakes your making in your build, except not really having an end goal in mind. You can pursue recharge and get a lot of it. But I don't think you need too much recharge. Your choice of ice armor...well, I love ice blast, but I have never been smart enough to figure out ice armor. The hold protection from Wet Ice seems a bit low for an armor that holds aggro as well as it can - that much I learned the hard way. The one thing I see...is because Savage melee provides such generous end reduction, you're able to use Energy Absorption more as a set mule than an endurance management tool. At level 33, you probably haven't run into that many EBs or AVs yet. You may regret that choice, unless you have enough global accuracy bonuses to help you - you may find that to be a mistake in some scenarios. Just my two cents on a combo I've never tried. I'm sure there are others who can give more feedback.

Lunar Ronin's entire post is filled with excellence. Things I have done myself - and I have no idea why I didn't mention it. Just not that smart, I guess. I only wanted to chime in that there are some additional requirements for this HPT accolade (and the others) that you can read about here.

So, level 40 fire/rad - running at 0/4. I'm sure you're mistaken. There is no rad secondary for blasters that I am aware of. Maybe you mean Atomic secondary? I think that's what you mean. I am someone who used to team - and then go solo - and scratch my head trying to figure out why I would be a cannon on teams, and glass when solo. It's not all about the build. It's also about practice and experience. This is just my own hunch, based on my own experiences - which should not be construed as any specific issue you're having - just something that could be a factor. When you're a tank, you have status protection. Your odds of getting stunned or mezzed are maybe 5%, if that. (assuming you're sufficiently high enough level to get your status protection armor). Then you switch to a blaster, and this is no longer the case. With 0/4, your setting elevates the mobs to +1 higher than they otherwise would be. And at 0/4, some of the mobs in there are going to be +1, despite the setting of 0. So, you're fire/*...any mitigation has to either come from dps or atomic secondary. The good news is Metabolic Acceleration is probably the best sustain for blasters simply because, while it doesn't prevent holds/mez, it certainly decreases the duration of those holds. There's no real way to illustrate how one player might deal with a certain scenario without a lot of pain-staking time to make screen shots and such. I think Kaizen hits the nail on the head, letting you know that CoT are no longer a walk in the park. Simply reduce your difficulty to 0/3, and see if that fares any better. The notoriety options being just in that tiny chat bubble are really a great option, and you should feel no shame in lowering the difficulty for certain factions that are known for mez, like Rikti, Freakshow and CoT.

I was wondering if we could change the supa-trolls into the "unleveled" versions. This way, if my level 19 or whatever comes across one, I have incentive to bash them for xp if the mood strikes me. I am not sure about the trolls before they get "sup-ed up", because I'm not clear on where they come from before they get to the rave/raid. But, seems like these supa-trolls could be a bit more fun, certainly more of a challenge for higher level characters who come across them.

This is just my opinion - but if you played that character to 50 - why change anything? Sure, incarnate/end game stuff is a bit more challenging - but you also have 1-2 more teams of folks to buff you up so you're far better off than you were when you were doing standard play prior to 50+. Unless there's something you definitively know is wrong, why sweat it? Now - if you want to get your character ready for advanced mode TFs...that's an entirely different matter (although...the right team comp around you, might not matter too much) For each advanced mode tf, there's a little something different that you might want to change for each of the different hard modes. So, suggestions for one would not necessarily align with the others. If you were having fun getting to 50, just keep having fun with it.

Nope. I mean, all you need is to click doors, contacts and glowies. No need for anything fancy.

Speed runs - click asap Other runs - no need to click asap. Just clobber until things are clear. UNLESS Team lead says otherwise. Then follow team lead's directions, even when they're wrong or I think they're wrong. It's like a learning moment for them and the more pain that comes with the mistake, the easier the learning happens.

Last night, running the Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok - Hopkins says, "What do you mean, 'They're not ready' ? " This entire bit between Hopkins and the scientists that are working on the Paragon Protectors is quite amusing to me.

Oops, sorry. Literacy is apparently not a strong suit for me.

I have 63 level 50's on the primary account. All of them are at least vet level 3. All are t-4. At least one of each AT...but mostly ranged characters, blasters, corruptors, defenders. The 2nd and 3rd accounts each have dozens more 50s that are t-4, but only some get any play. Those accounts were made mostly to facilitate badges and inf generation to fund the primary account. More for the badges than anything else. Only a few Sentinels, but that may change as the AT has had some adjustments to improve it. Of all the ATs...the VEATs, HEATs, MMs & Doms are the ones I have the least of. And frankly, they are the ones I should be most focused on making more of..but there are reasons I don't. Not sure how good the reasons are, but they're there. I am super jealous of folks who can be happy to play just one. Making a build - mids makes it more easy, but it's still a challenge to not build characters the same way and to find other things to focus on. Like more dps, less survivability. Or not using Scorpion shield and going with Dark Armor instead, Or recently, my corruptors are noticing an option for Frozen Armor right out of the gate, and max HP and a pet that doesn't totally suck. I have learned that if I PL a character to 50, I might get the 4 passive accolades, do some tfs and iTrials, but then I park them, never to play them again. Or not very often. So many characters that don't even get logged in for the anniversary badges. I tell myself to just delete those characters, but I only rarely do. This is good - as the Sentinels are now worth another look. Instead of making one from scratch, I might just respec. Or not. Not sure I'll learn as much from a respec as I will just playing it, leveling it, and pestering players smarter than I am in the help channel.

I have: Uncle Artica Mouse Potato Incomplet Thong Kong - pictured (from the rear, of course)

Well...I did some noodling for your Colossus character, and I came up with Horsebox. I get it - your first reaction is - "WTF does that have to do with Invuln/Superstrength?" So, I did a search for Ukrainian strongman, and there's a fellow who reputedly could carry around a horse, as opposed to him riding the horse. Well, what else carries horses? Horse trailers, and in some circles, another name for a horse trailer is horsebox. I don't suspect it would be a stretch for a former circus strongman to get the nickname. It's just a question of whether or not you want to forgo specific mention of how he got his powers, and just go with how the nickname stuck from the strongman days. And yeah, it's not terribly sexy, I get it. But, it's the only thing I have at the moment.

The challenges are out there now - at least, they seem to be. The advanced mode tfs - but even so, that's only 3 tfs that offer that option, and that is not likely sufficient for you (or anyone else that seeks challenges) I realize that this response may not be offering you the solution you want - but there is an option to do various content through ouro without incarnate powers. I would think that would limit at least some of the use of nukes. I do get what you're saying. Even as a blaster, I'll be all ready to drop blizzard on a group for the beauty of the orange numbers, but someone else has nuked them before I could. And yes, on one of my recent stalkers, I'd be lined up for the AS and then a judgement goes off before my attack fires. Certainly, I can see a source of frustration in that type of context. I just look at those incidents like I look at knockback. Not ideal for me, but part of the game.

I miss the days when the recipes sold for 2M or less. Takes a lot of patience to get that now. Thing is - I would enjoy it if recipes were 2.6M. Plenty of profit in that. 3.2M or so after crafting, salvage. Converters - whether you use them or not depends on what you're trying to do. Just the big three, you're going to burn through a bunch. But if you're just crafting and placing them for sale for 5M...which is darn cheap for a pvp IO, historically speaking. Leaves room for the converter roulette guy to make some if they don't want to craft. Or the guy trying to finish his build and doesn't want to spend 7-8 for one of the big 3. I was seeing the Shield Wall's going for 4+M - the end/recharges, too! Even trash set PVP recipes were going for 3.4M That was fine over the MS even when crazy/drunk/blind/generous folks were buying them up at 15M. But at 7M, nope, not going to do it. What I found the most interesting was how many recipes were finding their way into the market. A LOT. Like 100 or so every 12 hours. and that was at my lowball point. Bidding higher would surely have gotten more, because I saw the higher bids in the history. I just don't think they were bidding for very many - which is how I got mine - at least, that's my thinking. I don't get pvp recipes every day when I actively play content (non-farm). Maybe when I farm, I might get one every couple of days. I guess...if I was farming all day, then yeah, maybe. Either way - someone was dumping a lot of pvp recipes in the market, more than I'm used to seeing - but then again, the MS event brought more players than I was used to seeing. It wouldn't surprise me to learn our HC devs have manipulated the supply ( drop rates) to keep prices low. But that's pure conjecture. I've always been fairly lucky with the RNG when it comes to drops. At least, I've felt lucky. For all I know everyone gets that kind of "luck".

Huh? Famous live player? No player was famous in the strict definition of the word. Perhaps well-known in their social group on the server they played on, but nobody was famous, sorry. One might make the case that Beefcake got fairly famous for presumable paying someone to pigg dive and build vidiotmaps. (That's a sketchy synopsis/summary of things I've heard - no representation of accuracy there) But that's nitpicky of me, for sure. I see different sides to this. When I make a new character, the first thing I think of are the sets I want to play, usually. Rarely, I come up with a name first. I was watching WWE and some lady wrestler was doing a promo, making fun of her opponent calling her "The Scary Queen of Scots"...no doubt a play on "Mary, Queen of Scots". So, I made a new character with that name. Lately, I've seen a Mary Queen of Scotch. A variation on the same theme, I suppose. We all do things our own way, and I can understand the frustration of thinking of this new theme/concept/idea only to discover someone else is using the name you wanted. It's frustrating. True story here: In grad school, I was considering pursuing a PhD. It would be expensive and certainly exhausting. It wasn't part of my master plan, but it occurred to me to at least consider it. I had this idea after watching a NASCAR race when the driver I was pulling for had to unexpectedly pit because of a flat tire. The year was 2003, and I was driving a 1987 Ford Taurus. At the time, it was a pretty popular, reliable car, and it was paid for, ran well. Seeing this issue with the tire caused me to ask myself, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could design a sensor to tell us when a tire is running out of air? I mean, that can't be that hard to do." Well, I found out after reaching out to a retired pit crew boss who told me the odds of any pit boss sharing information on tires would be very, very low, and that there was already a tire pressure sensor in the market. Someone had already thought of "my idea" and successfully designed, tested, manufactured and marketed it. Several years before I did. Driving an older car, and never needing to rent a newer car...I just didn't know this was already out in the market. There is nothing new under the sun. Someone has the same name you do, somewhere. You might have thought of it - but odds are, someone else has as well. It's not a great feeling to see your idea has been implemented by someone else. I get it. Trust me, I get it. Eventually, patents expire. There's nothing now to stop me from coming up with a new way to the same thing the current air pressure sensors in tires work. Your concept can still work, but you just have to approach it from a different angle. It's damned annoying, we all get it, but that's also a chance for you to show creativity. And I'm sorry, using 0 instead of O is probably okay, but using (as an example) Apache-Fire because Apache Fire is already taken...that's really annoying. Especially when I'm at ToT with that character, and then you show up with your character, and I am asked why I'm multi-boxing when I'm not. Yeah, I don't like that. Take that to another server or come up with something else. That said, nobody cares if I like it or not - and I don't have to like it. It's your game, too. I have been asked one time if I would give up a character's name - and I did. Didn't charge them any inf at all. I think they had big fun with "Big Kahuna" on Torchbearer. My character there was a PL'd controller, of all things, that at the time, I didn't have the inf to slot properly, nor did I really understand how to play it, which is why it was idle, and long forgotten since Excelsior had opened. I still like the name; but if I'm not using it, and it's not on the server I'm playing on, feel free to ask me.

I made my first (relative) chunk of change in this game back in 2019 or so...saw people paying 5m for catalysts. I cashed in all the reward merits I had - ignorant of winter packs, if they were even available, I forget - could have really re-invested that into even more. Once you get enough to reinvest and still outfit your upcoming characters, it seems to snowball from there. Like life, there are risks when you're essentially working for yourself. It was about that time the HC devs opted to seed salvage. Smarter players were paying attention on brainstorm and likely had a clue this was going to happen and I got sunk with more than a few slots. I didn't really lose inf, just listing fees, but the lesson was learned and driven home. The only guaranteed inf is the inf that comes from defeating npcs. The rest is an investment with typically low risk, and some higher risk. I knew from retail that farming was kind of fun. Unlike the world in Paragon city, built even half-well, burn would solve a lot of problems. And - the best part is - you get recipes and salvage with the only cost being your time and the opportunity costs of what you could be doing in lieu of farming. The latter carried a heavy price for me. While farming isn't terribly dull for me, it's not that much fun, either. Then I learn we're allowed to have multiple instances if the server pop isn't too high. Enter the alt accounts. Scalable farming- and the resultant marketing - I went from 800M to my first 2B in very short order. I made a ton more from the crafting and converting those drops than from the farming. These folks want to go at +4/8, go right ahead. I'll take 0/8 with my SO build, and slowly upgrade to the ATOs and WInter-Os. I think this is still where the steady stream of inf comes from. These folks that do these KMITF for an hour - I out produce that easily by crafting, converting and marketing - on a small scale, while the 3rd account gets to actually play. Enter the true evil geniuses like Yomo who spill the secrets (some I've stolen from his posts myself) and now it looks like everyone is just in the mix. But this isn't really what's happening, I don't think. I think we had a flux of returning players who didn't know how much IOs were going for. Some bid way too high (as evidenced by the PVP IOs going for nearly 3x the "new normal") and for reasons that escape me, someone or multiple players were spitting out LotG's at less than 4M. Some of that could have been altruism; some ignorance. Some just greedy noobs wanting/needing the sale "now". For me, the solution is clear. Play the game in any fashion you see fit that doesn't violate the rules. Marketing is kind of silly now, because we don't really need to. None of us do. We do it for the fun, maybe. But to fund your alts? Nonsense. Alts are self-funding as you play them - at least, for the most part. Your more established characters should have more than enough to get a starter kit going for your alt. As for having dozens of alts all at the same time - you do you - I've no advice for that. I don't know how people move from lowbie to lowbie and expect to retain what they learned while playing them, but I don't have the strong, agile brain I used to have. Too much good Ouzo and bad Scotch maybe. Or the lack of sleep. Rest is a weapon in real life. Be well-armed, if you can. Inspired by @lyrium, seeing what they did and wondering what I might do.. I just rolled a character with zip and it was tough because the way I might do it was conflicting with the niches my principal marketer was doing things. So, I had to find new niches, or compete with myself - and knowing the numbers, that didn't seem fair. Or smart. So, I found a new one, or at least, new to me. I started slowly with the melee AoE uncommon recipes - multi-strike and cleaving blow. I know as a crafter/converter type, most folks don't want to deal with rare salvage, as that shrinks profits. But, if I have the rare already from play...well, why not? At the time, rares were going for 400k. Big deal. So, I turned 10 of those recipes into eradication: chance for energy. The multi-strikes were annoying as they're only available at level 20 and up. Higher crafting costs. Still, instead of burning 2 converters to stay in the category, go out of category for 1. That's why they call it roulette, I think. Certainly a gamble. You all have read this movie script before. Nothing new to reveal, other than it can still be done. You win by playing the game. You can bid on a few things, 10 at a time, and you can make your way through the game buying all the loot you need to gear your characters. It's painful when you recognize you want the d-sync that has accuracy and recharge. But you don't want to spend 400M to get it. So you play the game. Grab more merits. Have fun. Then you win. before long, you don't even realize that you've been getting by with just the 50 accuracy IO instead of that d-sync. Keep the inf. Just play the game.

I have had a bomb badge fail in Underground several times - usually someone isn't paying attention, runs smack into a bomb and wonders what happened. Team chat is saying "stop", league chat is screaming "stop", and on discord, I'm screaming "Stop!". Eventually, I tried a different reaction - "Crap - kill it now!" - mixed results with that. Sometimes, we're fast enough - but when you do that, you kind of have to keep going. But once...the worst effort of all...the ugt failed while fighting the first War Walker AV...Des got some non-AV aggro, and for whatever reason, her hitpoints fell very quickly while we were all paying attention to the AV. This wasn't my run, but I knew better and let myself get distracted. Just as much my fault as the league leader's. Des dies, trial ends. We quickly re-queued and got Master - which makes the failure all the more appalling.