Ukase

We all know Praetoria is pretty much a ghost town, despite a few enthusiasts who enjoy it. For me, one of the things that prevents me from leveling that path more often is the lack of zones to grab the explorations from for the reward merits. At level 15, assuming you have SS, there's not a whole lot of zones you can't get to, praetoria included for those merits. But the goldsiders are literally stuck there. They'll never get more than 40 reward merits from the 8 zones until they hit 20 and decide to leave. So...what about some GMs? Like an Avatar of Hamidon coming out to have some fun? Or even some DE GMs that could spawn Hami in the middle of the zone?

With this macro, using the attached popmenu file, you can see at a glance what you need for each badge, and each accolade. I believe @AboveTheChemist is the chap that came up with this very useful popmenu, and has been kind enough to update in good time after each patch. Not to discount your efforts - but I think this does what you want. Here's an example: I can see at a glance that my level 46 brute just needs to finish with the AVs to complete Portal Jockey. Post edited to remove an outdated file.

As someone who solos a lot, and on any AT or powerset combo, not all choices will be enjoyable. But, it's all subjective. When leveling, I found Dominators and Controllers to be just miserable. Their DPS is pitiful, woefully so - again, that's while leveling in the lower levels. When you get enough recharge on the Dom for perma-dom, and you keep that alignment status for Frenzy, it can be fun. As for the controller, it's hard to beat ill/dark for soloing, but even then, you have to wait until the 30's to feel "super" in any sense of the word. An MM...you can solo easily with, but it requires you to pay attention. You can't just blindly mash buttons and hope for success. Playing an MM and playing an MM well are two different things. The latter requires paying attention, and generally involves the use of a lot of macros and/or keybinds. The Sentinel...it can be fun, but frankly, if you have the budget, a blaster will survive every bit as well and certainly dish out more damage. The Corruptor...is also solo friendly, because the secondary can buff/debuff, depending on your choice and either make your attacks hit harder, or make the npc attacks hit less frequently or not as hard. Depending on your power selections, there's a case to be made, in some circumstances that a corruptor is just as good as a blaster. Just depends on your playstyle. When it comes to DPS, that is a messy stat. Powersets with AoE tend to be thought of as the kings of DPS, as they whittle down groups, as opposed to single target specialists which can take down bosses much faster, but can only do so one at a time. Blasters often are disregarded due to the woefully inaccurate label of "glass-cannon". I would submit it's the player that is the glass-cannon, not the AT. On live, that case could be made, but on HC, the blaster is quite sturdy with boosted HP over the live version. 1847 Hit points at cap and when you slap on a defensive amplifier to prevent low-mag stuns/holds/sleeps, you're a killing machine, nigh unstoppable unless you're just careless or get easily distracted, or just don't care and enjoy pushing things to the edge. The thing about blasters, though, is many of their secondary attacks have you in melee. And the damage from those secondary attacks are less powerful than the primary attacks. So, in some sense, it makes sense to prioritize the primary. But, melee IS ranged. It's just a shorter range. So, there's no reason to avoid melee attacking at all. Now, I understand that some folks want to stay at range. Usually, this aversion comes from getting hammered when in melee. And, let's be candid, the melee defense or resistance of a blaster is nothing to scream about, particularly in lower levels. Fortunately, there are plenty of useful power choices in the power pools that can let you avoid melee if you really want to - and those power selections can increase your survival at range and in melee - like the fight pool and leadership. If forced to choose, I always choose fight pool over leadership because Weave gives more bang for the buck than Maneuvers. When you toss in an epic armor at level 35, it's not unreasonable to expect melee/ranged defense of 30% without sacrificing a ton of recharge. Then a small purple luck inspiration, and you can go just about anywhere you want and kill 'em all pretty quickly, whether melee or ranged. Now, if you're a newer player, or can't afford or determine how to build for survivability with a blaster - go with a Sentinel. The recharge of the nuke for a Sentinel is comparatively fast! And you can have a lot of fun with one. In short, there's no wrong way. I'd go blaster, but that's my preference. And specifically, I'd go ice/ice, ice/fire, fire/ice or water/fire, or fire/fire. Water and ice primary are both great for increased survivability at lower levels.

At level 1, I enter this keybind for all my characters. /bind z "dialog_yes$$dialog_answer Accept" No, it doesn't get rid of them, but I am able to get rid of the box quickly with the mash of my z button. Edit: I really should read through the entire thread before giving a response. I see Tiger Shadow just gave a more useful solution, with yes or no.

Sure - it's a great problem to have. Figuratively, tons of items in character email. It's no secret that something changed over this past year, where trying to collect items quickly, via mashing the "Claim item" button often resulted in a failed or delayed attempt. The solution was the "Please wait a moment" message. For most items, like the enhancements, or the lump of 25 reward merits, I'm okay with this solution. I currently have over 1000 of the enhancement unslotters on a few accounts. Pulling them out, one by one, is pretty much a tedious chore, and given how slowly the claiming has to be, it will take 1000's of seconds. Might I suggest we have an option to claim 10 at a time? It is true, I've no idea how problematic that would be, but if it's a simple fix, can we have it? Please? Additionally, if it's a simple fix, can we claim 10 converters at a time, too? Alternatively, is there some setting I can adjust to allow my system to tackle the process, rather than lay the burden on the HC server? Or, even better - what about a "Claim all" option? It would look similar to this: For those unaware, this is from Rebirth, and they certainly do things differently there. And it's not my intention to do comparisons, merely to illustrate that from my limited perspective, the figurative wheel has already been invented. And since there's no rivalry going on to my knowledge, seems like an easy thing to port over - but I am ignorant of what is involved. It might very well cause Faultline to fully sink into the earth.

For me, I guess it's the "Stop 30 Fir Bolg from entering the door" mission. So many of you auto-complete that one and it leaves me scratching my head as to why. It can be a nice challenge. It can also be a snooze-fest, particularly for a blaster or other ranged dps character with super speed or tp self. Still, I like it. It is essentially a kill all, but I like the challenge of keeping all of them from getting through.

I have an issue with the auto-accept, because sometimes - I get the buff and have no idea who gave it to me. Which, I guess is why sometimes my avatar is looking around like I was trying to get away with something. Another minor annoyance is when I'm crafting, clearly not going into battle or anything, and someone who's not on my team decides to cast it on me. And suddenly, I feel obligated to reciprocate, when I'd often prefer to do what I was doing before. So, I tend to auto-reject them. This way, I don't know who tried to give it to me, and I don't have to reciprocate. Additionally, it lets me use that slot in the power tray for something with more utility. When I'm solo, although my characters get Secondary Mutation, it never makes its way in my tray, and is almost never used. And I don't think I've ever cast MF on anyone unless it was cast on me first. It's just not something I think about, mainly because it's not in my trays.

From what I heard - second hand, he spent over 400 Billion. I was shocked to hear they had that much. I know there's got to be about a couple of dozen folks who are richer than Yomo and myself, but they keep things quiet. I have no first hand data, but I was told that when the game first opened by HC, there was some morality mission exploit that a number of folks used to gather in a large number of reward merits in fairly short order. Sadly, I only hear about these things well after things are fixed. It'd be nice to get in on the ground floor of an exploit like that so I could get bug hunter without spending hours on brainstorm. Then again, could be whomever told me was getting their information also second hand, and when that happens, well, next thing you know, the sky is falling and my name is Henny Penny.

This is just anecdotal evidence, laced with perception bias. It seems to me that the random drop of the PAP is kind of like the purple/very rare recipe in one regard. I have a large number of alts. Anecdotally, yet certainly not every time, most of the time, if it's been a week or more since I last played the character, I get a purple. It had been a week since I'd played a certain ss/elec brute. I got a PAP after completing the first mission of a Morty Kal. On my badge characters, I tend to let them rest when they complete the latest new badges. So, when page 4 dropped, I went for the badges. PAP dropped in the midst of the new incarnate arc for one, for another in the midst of the new Steve Sheridan arc. Zip for a third character, but the 4th and 5th also got a PAP from a random drop. Each one of those got a very rare after their "rest" from the last page. Like I said, anecdotal with perception bias, but I'd suggest giving your alts a week's rest and see what happens - if they mean that much to you. But - here's a question: PAPs are selling for 7M now. I have to wonder, how much will the price go up when they intro the rest of the costumes? (My understanding is we've only seen the first tier; two additional tiers are to follow - but I haven't read that specifically, I just skimmed some things, heard some things, so nothing scientific about that, just conjecture. I know someone gambled big, buying 10K of them. No idea why. But if they go up to even 10M, that's still a 2M profit per, after fees. IF they go up.

I'm sure most remember that NPCs, when clicked on would give you a specific message, depending on what letter their name started with. For example, any NPC with the first letter M in their name would tell you how long you had been on patrol. (how many hours you'd played your character up to that point) I was in Cimerora, and got bored, so I saw this: You may not be able to make it out, but Gaia is saying that "there are 11 masks in this part of the city right now. " I would imagine that's designed for Talos Island...but I dunno...maybe they are talking about heroes or villains with masks.

Main probably means different things to different folks. Back on live, "Main" meant the character you played more often than any other. For me, it was basically the character I used to get all the badges, or on live, as many as I could get, having missed out on the first couple of anniversary badges. Now, for me, main is all but meaningless. I don't just play one, nor do I play one more than most. But the character that I will always consider to be the best is my ice/ice blaster. Numbers suggest fire/fire is better, but numbers can lie, as it all depends on the build and more importantly, the player behind the character. Given that on live, I played the ice blaster far more than any other character, and I'm still using the same key binds, I have my strategies and tactics down to reflex mostly. The only time I need to think about things is when encountering new mechanics from some of the more recent content. So, for me, ice IS better than fire. By a noticeable margin. Obviously, other players will do better with fire than I will do with fire, but I'm going to do as well with ice as just about anyone I can think of. The reason(s) that drew me into the ice blaster were partially due to @olepi's guide to ice/ice back on the live forums after I had leveled a fire/stone tank to 50. I used that tank to do quite a bit of farming, not realizing that fire/fire would have been a better way to go, as far as efficiency goes. But I did enjoy that Seismic Smash! Still, I wanted something different. Olepi made an informative guide and sold me on the versatility and power of the ice blaster. Freeze Ray, a hold that does very good damage with a very fast animation and a distinct in-game sound, coupled with blizzard, a welcome nuke that didn't require me to be in the midst of the chaos that is melee was icing on the cake. All the attacks in ice primary, except for Bitter Freeze Ray, have crisp, clean, fast animations. Even though the mag of a blasters hold is lower than that of a controller, with fast recharge, there's no reason I couldn't contribute on the green mitos on hami raids either, simply because of the fast recharge of freeze ray. And probably the biggest thing for me then was ice patch. Now, I don't really find much use for it, but when leveling, ice patch was an excellent "oh shit" button. If my holds missed, or I got over-run, the ice patch would always save me, except against the likes of Nesferatu who didn't slip like most other bosses. Always had to try and stay at range with him, and would often kite him as best I could just to get past him. Of course, this was all before inventions sets, so I had no defense. Never occurred to me then to take fighting pool or leadership. I was so ignorant, I didn't even know that I was ignorant. Still, just the memories of playing the character, even in pvp before travel suppression was a thing, I had a lot of fun with my ice blaster. The only thing that comes close to that fun now is my ss/fire brute, my shield/mace tank and my fire/fire blaster. But ice will always be the best if anyone asks, prefaced with the caveat of "There is no best", just "best for me".

Why? They're just going to shut down the thread because my word count in the post isn't long enough and the words I use aren't convoluted enough. But seriously, why do I need to talk about something I know next to nothing about?

Not sure you understood my question. Let me try to be more clear. Say you're fighting this Fake Nemesis EB. What level are you, and what level is the EB? Is it -1? +3? If it's -1, I can definitely see it being rather trivial. If it's +4, if I'm on a well-built melee character, I'm most likely not worry about holds/stuns/sleeps, so really, it's just a big bag of hitpoints, no matter what level. Sometimes, there may be surrounding npcs that provide some distraction due to potential -defense or -tohit or -recovery. (or a combo of those and other negative attributes). The biggest challenge our volunteer staff has in finding a way to make these interactions meaningful and non-trivial, appropriately rewarding without being too demanding for the average player. But if I'm on my blaster, I do have to worry a bit about being mez/stun/held/slept etc. I have to carefully consider what inspirations are in my tray before the battle. The higher the level I am, the easier these fights are, because I can load up on appropriate inspirations, even to the point of overkill. I can use my base or AH to get enough super insps to cap my damage, toHit and resistance, with enough insps to keep them capped for another minute or so. So, yeah, an EB is trivial if I use even some of the tools at my disposal. And sometimes, if I'm on a particularly well-built character, it may still be trivial. But I don't worry about it because I know there are other players who find what I consider trivial to be too challenging. There's not many of these players, but more than I would have thought. Most are just kids,I suspect, newer players who still haven't figured things out, or older players who consider RotP to be a valid part of their attack chain. (or play in such a way as to make me think they believe it) And, for some, that's great fun, which is fine, just not my preference. I hate to retoggle. Again, it's up to us, the players to make things harder until such time our volunteer dev staff find a way to make that EB a bit more balanced between the scale of Boss and AV.

So...here's my thoughts: Certainly, as mentioned by others, not all EBs are the same. Some are easier than others, for sure. But what's not real clear is what level are these EBs that you find so trivial? And what AT are you using to face them? Is it the same with your defender as your brute? We can't (or maybe we can, but should we) change the EBs to make them more of an epic fight when there may be players that also like to solo who struggle with the EBs we have now. Part of the reason for the disconnect is there are still players who avoid the invention system because they find it too complex. There are also players who may not understand attack mechanics or strategy, and just run in, mash buttons and hit the hospital...over and over, in the hopes of overcoming their regen. Unfortunately, the burden to make an EB more challenging is on you. Consider buffing the enemies through Ouro. Or debuffing yourself. There's all kinds of ways to make things easier or harder. The only limit is your imagination.

That was my plan. I've waited this long, another few days won't kill me.

Thanks - my question was if you'd already defeated those entities before page 3, would you get retroactive credit. My character has already done Posi 1 & Posi 2. So, technically, should have credit for Doc Buzzsaw and Dr. Vahzilok. Went into the abandoned sewer network and got 6 (which gave me no credit, I suppose I already got those 6). Tackled Meinst in a DFB and got credit for him. But I'd already done DFB, so I should have already had credit for him.

The requirements are pretty clear. Dr. Meinst Doc Buzzsaw Dr. Vahzilok Newt & Salamander Malady & Pathogen Cortex & Grey Matter I'm on a character that I guess I got lazy with. Regardless, the closest to completion says I'm 6 of 9. I have the Cadaver Counter and Cleanser badges from DFB - but I just confirmed from clobbering Dr. Meinst that I now have 7 of 9. Did they not award retroactively? I'm sure they didn't (as evidenced by progress in clobbering Meinst) - but I can't specifically recall.

I have a fire/fire blaster and a fire/rad corruptor (as well as many other fire/* corruptors. There is no question that the fire/fire blaster does more dps. But, with careful slotting, over time, the corruptor's secondary & scourge can close the gap some. Often, I can't really tell the difference, but really - I'm not looking for a difference. When soloing, the fire/rad will often fare better in harder content because of the debuffs. But, I've slotted for that. That's why you play a */rad. The debuffs are noticeable.

There is a way! And it makes no difference where your power is in your tray slots. Use a keybind. /bind B powexecname Ageless Core Epiphany (in my mind, B is for buff, so I just use B for whatever my Destiny slotted power happens to be) But, as you say, you have multiple Destinies. And you don't want to keep moving them in/out of where they are. Then you just have to be more clever with the key assignments. /bind V powexecname Barrier Core Epiphany or whatever key makes sense to you. The hassle is in remembering which key does which Destiny. For me, with all my characters, it's better for me to just use B for buff, N for Nuke (Judgement) and V for Hybrid. The Lore requires a reticle click, and the rest are auto. So, those three keys are next to each other, and I use them for all my characters so I don't have to keep anything straight in my head when I change characters.

For me, I tend to take them on most characters - and I solo a lot. It's not about self-ish vs self-less. It's about the set bonuses. When you're a defender, Corruptor or controller - the buffs are a LOT better than when you're on a blaster or scrapper or brute. It's almost a no-brainer to get them, if you have the endurance to manage them. And, candidly, without clever slotting, not every build will. I've got a fire/time controller that struggles to run these constantly, and I have a build to respec into it for better endurance management, but respecs on a level 50 character I've leveled up cause me to hesitate, because 1) I hate to find out my new build is worse than the one before and 2) I hate respecs in general, having to clear the tray, replace powers in the tray, do something with enhancements the new build won't use, get new enhancements to replace those...it's quite tedious. The leadership pool is not all it's cracked up to be when you're running a brute, tank, scrapper or stalker. The value of these buffs are not very good at all. Better off grabbing weave than maneuvers. IF you can grab both, that's all well and good - but it's going to cost you access to another power pool. And that's not so easily managed, particularly if you love Combat Jumping and the control it gives you, Super Speed, and then of course, there's fold space. A lot of folks really, really like Fold Space. And who can blame them? I can do without it on some characters, but others almost need to have it. And then there's the fight pool that almost without exception, every melee character will take. Often, there's just no room in the build for the meager 2.X % that maneuvers gives. It's a great set mule, but it also drains endurance - and lets be open, many of us will zip through so many missions when teamed up, unless it's hard mode, nobody needs that buff. Useful? sure. Necessary? Certainly not. That's what inspirations and defensive amplifiers are for. Not to mention other teammates may have cold shields and such to provide. Stacking leadership is really only useful in difficult content like HM ITF & Aeon. Beyond that, it's kind of useless, other than as set mules for non-squish characters. And, really, that's what I use them for, set mules. I like Assault - nice damage buff I don't have to think about. Maneuvers has a nice set mule opportunity. Same with Vengeance. Tactics - meh. Useful for the challenging stuff, but beyond that, the kismet 6% is a better option for most of my builds. If I can fit it - and can handle the end drain, great. But if not, nobody is going to miss it. After all - they should all have the kismet 6% right? I mean, who wouldn't? You'd have to be really selfish to rely on teammates for your accuracy, right? See what I did there? In all seriousness, it's all about your build and what you can get away with. There are thousands (if not more) of ways to make any given character that are going to be quite good, depending on your playstyle. They don't all need to use leadership.

My perspective is likely different than others. I don't "feel" or sense any decline in numbers based on monitoring help and lfg chat. I do see a number of players I used to team with are no longer logging in. A lot of them, in fact. Most of that is due to things picking up due to the pandemic seeming to drop off the news coverage. Like it or not, the pandemic seems to be "over". At least the non-stop coverage of it seems to have dropped from the news. There are a collection of players that have found other games or other social outlets. Hopefully, it's other social outlets. Nothing against other games, but sitting and playing this game just isn't really a great use of time beyond a certain point. In my younger days, 14 hours a day playing this game was common. Now, I'd be lucky to hit 14 hours in two weeks. The pandemic probably gave a lot of folks an excuse to get on, as there wasn't much else to do, except maybe play other games. Now, there's football, movies, hiking, running and all other things to do besides waste time in a virtual world that doesn't give much of a return in the real world, beyond some "chill" time. Don't get me wrong, "Chill" time, or whatever you want to call it can be important. I just think beyond a point, there's probably more important things to do. I'm just glad I work remotely, or I probably wouldn't even be able to play what little I do.

And you are correct. I was nitpicking; no offense meant. My only purpose was to demonstrate that emp merits were not solely used for incarnate materials. The vet level rewards...man, what can I say about them, except I'm super glad we have them! I should add that I wouldn't know a non sequitor if it bit me in the backside. If you're gonna make me break out my dictionary, bring out more than one polysyllabic word so it's worth my while. And a phonetic guide, too. I've read the word before, but I don't think I've ever heard it aloud. Snarky will make fun of me if I mispronounce it.

This is a bit mis-leading. Prior to the change from this patch, you can't really say that using emps "as intended" was for incarnate progress only. Yes, it's certainly true before shutdown that emp merits were used for incarnate progress - but they were also used for other items - as shown below: That's just Emp Mike, and doesn't show Astral Kristy. Historically, emps and astrals were used for recipes and such just as well as incarnate progress. As for this change from last patch, some folks probably missed it, but the reason for the change had more to do with a few bad apples that were reportedly using the emp->reward merit exchange in a nefarious manner. It's still lost on me why our HC dev team didn't lead with their reasoning instead of having countless pages of debate over the issue. But, I'm just a visitor here. Not my game, I just get to play here. Someone did finally explain what was going on, but felt they couldn't share too much, lest some players take advantage of specific info.

I simply meant that while confused, because I'm solo, that's the only attack I can fire. And, you're right, doesn't do any good.

There is a Paragon Protector that dishes out radiation damage, and those rascals kill me if I don't see them in time. I mean, it's over quick. So, I try to target them first. There's another Crey NPC that gives me a confuse, which doesn't matter if I have a PBAoE attack, but if not, it's really frustrating because I can't attack anything. And I still don't know which one does that. This is one of those reasons I build my characters more for order than choas. It pays to be able to sit there and take the punishment for a minute at the cost of blowing them up in 5 seconds instead of 8 seconds.