BasiliskXVIII

I'm up to 37, current build is all-in on the AT powers for testing and vibes, and figured this would be a good place for a recap. The only real addition to my kit on the sonic melee side from last update is Sonic Clap. It's got a target limit of 5, but is surprisingly nice to use, given its 180° arc and 15' range. This parallels the AoE range of Deafening Wave and is a 5' larger radius than most sets' PBAoEs. If you're in the thick of it, this makes it very likely that you can reliably get to its target cap. Which is good, because it trades damage for ease of use and reliability. Presumably you'd be getting an extra 10% against attuned targets, but the AoE feels very light compared to my Rad/ and Staff/ stalkers. I haven't tried the open beta server for the changes to the powers' interactions with Attune, but presumably this should help. It does again, though, force you into that pattern of wasting time on Attune just to reach bare parity with other sets. I'm not sure how this affects procs from a practical standpoint. From what I understand, the larger area decreases proc rate, but having a bigger area means you'll be hitting more targets than with something like Guarded Spin, so this feels kinda like a wash? With Earsplitter in my arsenal, Attune is getting used less, mostly reserved for bosses and some beefier lieutenants like Crey tanks. Still hate the sound and am looking for the file names to shut it up. Having Earsplitter has been a big help to the feel of the set, since it fills out that Alpha strike backup role for when AS isn't available or you want a faster attack. I put the Blistering Cold proc in Attune, so opening a fight with Attune>Earsplitter can let you hold a boss more often than it doesn't. This does mean that Attune alerts enemies when it procs, but as long as you aren't dawdling in going straight from Attune to Earsplitter, I don't find that a big issue as far as crits go. Attune... Still doesn't feel great to me as far as game loops go. You activate it, and it passively adds chunks of damage, which just isn't really that Stalker life. I don't really want to be turning it on with every enemy, but also don't love it being constrained to just Bosses/AVs/EBs. And what it sounds like we're getting with the open beta changes pulls it back much more to the "you want this every time you fire off your AoE" to keep your AoE damage up. I would much rather just have another regular attack which I can rely on as part of an attack chain, which gives burst damage with Assassination. All that said, it does feel like there's decent control from the set. You get sleeps, holds, disorients, and knockdowns, and especially paired with Dark Armour like I have, this does feel like the set offers a fair amount of mitigation, which is made much better with /Dark's control. Overall, Sonic Melee feels functional but conflicted. It brings decent reliability, and some mitigation through controls, but leans too hard on Attune as a maintenance tax rather than giving Stalkers another satisfying burst tool to build around. With Earsplitter in the mix the set starts to click, but it still feels like it’s fighting its own intended game loop instead of fully embracing the hit-and-fade, assassination-driven playstyle the AT is built for. Not unplayably bad, but IMO a set that fights itself and needs some more attention to run with the rest of the pack.

If I were crowdsourcing permission to have an opinion, this might be of concern.

If the logic is: – the city doesn’t care because it’s outside normal civic space, – no one important is supposed to be there anyway, – and danger is acceptable as long as it’s geographically contained, Now we're just asking "what if the Central Park Slime shows up in New Jersey instead?" Jokes aside, we're really getting away from the suggestion being made - that GMs might be marked on the map. I don't think it is possible, as suggested by OP, that the map flag go up only when the GM is first targeted, but I do like the idea of it being marked on the map when it is there. We already get notifications when it spawns, having an obvious marker while it's there might make it more likely that players going through Perez go "oh, hey, Kraken's up. let's throw a team together and get some merits." Yes, it means that the extra 30 seconds or so that it takes to find it if you're in a dedicated hunting team is eliminated, but I think the additional visibility outweighs whatever may be lost on that front. I wouldn't say it's a high priority, but I think it'd be a fine addition.

The way I see it, if this were the intended reading, then you are explicitly the bad guy for fighting most GMs blueside. You shouldn't be getting rewarded with merits and badges, you should be getting cancelled. Picture it: A 20' slime monster shows up in the middle of Central Park one day. It's just sort of... well, there. It wanders a bit, but otherwise it's just big and ugly. First thing that happens is a military cordon and barriers being erected out of an "abundance of caution". But it doesn't really care, it just idly paces around. Within a week, someone's selling merch near Columbus Circle for the "Central Park Slime". By the next it's a local mascot. As its patterns become familiar, the military presence eases, and probably eventually just becomes a knee-high fence with "no entry" signs. Then someone comes along and destroys it? People would be up in arms! You'd be getting literal death threats for harming the Central Park Slime, much less destroying it. Hell, look how defensive some people get for attacking Sally. If the Kraken is passive, I take that to be entirely because the AI logic that allows Scrapyard to actively attack things around him did not exist until I7 when he was added.

How much of this is because of intentional design choices and how much because of limitations in the game engine and inertia, though? Presumably people in the setting are meant to be legitimately threatened by the presence of Giant Monsters even though they're technically only depicted as passively moving through the map, much in the same way that purse snatching victims in the game are at no actual threat from the purse snatchers. They can play tug of war with a purse up until the moment they're engaged or they despawn. I'm in a mission as I write this where Devouring Earth are putatively "invading" a Portal Corp lab, threatening scientists. I'm in no particular rush to save them because, well, the Devouring Earth's "invasion" mostly looks like standing in hallways disguised as trees and there's no fail state to this mission where the scientists can actually be harmed in any way. So we kind of are expected and conditioned to ascribe a level of implicit "hostility" and "urgency" to everything in the game that isn't necessarily reflected in the actions of the NPCs. If you're going into Boomtown to fight Babbage, it's assumed it's because he's actually a threat and not just because you're a big game hunter. If Jurassik appears to be just standing there, it's because Cryptic didn't want to dedicate the time and system resources to cluttering the area around him with tanks and military personnel in an area where there would also potentially be a zone's worth of players and particle effects when he was fought. Villainside, sure, it's fair to assume you're deliberately trying to take down the biggest, baddest thing around for bragging rights. But it's very much at odds with the ethos of heroside, especially at launch.

This assumes that "abandoning" Winter Lords is an undesired outcome. You need at least a handful of people to kill a WL but only one person clicking a gift gets the badge. The idea that players will open WL gifts and abandon them without fighting is almost a forgone conclusion. So either a) the devs put less thought into this mechanic than most people do into making their morning coffee, or b) there was an intentional choice made to encourage players to interact with the gifts so that Winter Lords are periodically present in a zone and thereby forcing players to interact with them. The name of the badge is even "Very Naughty". You can argue that this is simply because the game gives you that "You've been Very Naughty" popup when it's opened, but there's definitely a ludonarrative aspect to this, where opening a suspicious gift is meant to be transgressive by design.

Is "hunting" the GM really considered a "challenge"? You go to the zone and visit the 10 spots or so that the monsters spawn. Besides, if we're getting into the narrative of the matter, aren't giant monster attacks in fiction generally pretty obvious? The Kaiju scene in the Superman movie isn't predicated on a prolonged sequence of figuring out where he is.

I hate the crashes, but they could occasionally be nice to hit as an "oh shit" to get out of a bad situation. I usually skipped them The mid-range "light crash" T9s like Strength of Will and One with the Shield were my favourite, as they stepped up survivability enough to be useful, often in a direction not covered by the set itself, but also didn't require you to watch for the crash like a hawk or die horribly. The revamped versions, though? Easy skip. I just don't see the value to wasting a power pick in order to get an effect that you can more or less replicate by popping an insp or two.

I load up with 8 hours' worth at character creation, then forget to load up with more and get a few levels and wonder why it seems like the leveling speed slowed down so much, then I refill my supply and repeat.

Mithridatism is the practice of consuming small quantities of a poison to attempt to develop an immunity to it. In some cases it works... ... don't try it with lead, though.

Found a couple of "Quantum_Gunner" in Brickstown:

So I'm up to 28 and have been playing around with Lockdown in Deafening Wave and Blistering Cold in Attune. What I'm finding is that it's layering these controls very nicely. You have 20% chance from Deafening Wave to Mag 2 hold, 2.5 PPM for Lockdown (again, Mag 2) and another 2.5 PPM from Blistering Cold when I hit with Attune. Practically speaking, what this means it that if I have a crowd of enemies around me, I can pretty reliably disable about 40% of any minions for the first few seconds of any given fight, as well as get a single LT or Boss about 20% of the time. Even more if I then follow with Strident Echo. The end result is that it does start to feel quite "controller-y" especially backed up with Dark Armor's Oppressive Gloom. It's probably not going to be the "go-to" slotting solution, but it also doesn't feel like I've wasted my time, especially when the devs are adding more and more value to holds by allowing them to shut down annoying enemies' ability to use their most annoying abilities. (Paragon Protectors' ult, Illusionist and Master Illusionist Phasing, Fake Nemesis PFF) This means that even a trivial hold against these enemies is going to have a permanent effect. Ultimately I think it's still probably just numerically better to proc bomb them with damage and call it a day, death being the ultimate control and all, but if you're looking for something a bit different to do with your build, or even if you're willing to sacrifice a single proc slot in each power to be able to say "hey, look at the goofy thing I'm doing", it does add value. -Edit- Totally forgot Earsplitter. It has a 75% chance of a Mag 1 and a 75% chance of a Mag 3. Adding this on to the other effects, excluding Strident Echo, it bumps the likelihood of a hold to a LT to high 80s%, and Bosses to about 75%, assuming I'm doing the math right. Conceivably, you have about a 15% chance to hold an EB, which is neat even if it'd probably be so short as to be useless unless you're substantially overlevelled.

On the other hand, both Sonic Thrust from Sonic Manipulation (not melee) and Ki Push from Martial Combat have lower mag KB, but pair it with a hefty repel effect for a pretty substantial yeeting:

Well, the commands I use for my Demons/ MM are: /bind divide powexec_location me summon demonlings /bind multiply powexec_location me summon demons /bind subtract powexec_location me summon demon prince Then, I can just hit "/*-" on my numpad and summon the three tiers of pets at my location. Alternately, you could: /macro_image "DemonSummoning_SummonDemonlings" "Summon Demonlings" "powexec_location me summon demonlings" /macro_image "DemonSummoning_SummonDemons" "Summon Demons" "powexec_location me summon demons" /macro_image "DemonSummoning_SummonDemonPrince" "Summon Demon Prince" "powexec_location me summon demon prince" Which would give you replacement icons to use on your power bar. If you're using a different set, you can find its icons here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uHUi6BWFTYj4wbfGBs3LjZL88Fym6B-8EwDr18YZcY8/edit?usp=sharing Just make sure to change the power names to match the powers that you want to reference.

This can already be done with the powexec_location me command, which can be mapped to a bind or a macro.

Did some testing and it looks like there's an immediate chance to proc on applying Attune. Then it rolls again every few seconds as a toggle. This means that Attune will lose its "Do not alert" status if it pings an enemy with an effect.

I also have a Dark/Sonic Blaster and use this pairing on Deafening Wave there. In any group of 5 or more enemies I hit with it, it's regularly triggering 1-2 times. Despite the name, it seems all the lockdown proc is, is a chance to do a Mag 2 Hold. It doesn't care that the power is doing a hold, merely that it can. Mag 2 isn't going to affect lieutenants or bosses, but it does restrain minions and underlings. A little crowd control while you whittle the big guys down can go a long way. And if you get lucky, it means that anyone with mad 2 or higher resist that you do manage to hit with Strident Echo or Earsplitter's chance to proc also works. Is is going to be the best in slot option? Eh, probably not. I'd imagine the best procs are going to be the damage ones. But since I'm running /Dark Armour, I already get a few control options in Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear. I'm curious to see if a "stalminator" is feasible. Especially as holds now take away some of the most annoying powers from enemies. Might as well use the chance while leveling up to play around and see what I can do with it since I'll probably respec at 47 anyway.

The university courtyard doesn't yet have a day job. It could be that logging out outside on the campus gives student and inside the building gives professor

Put this on for inspiration:

For stalkers specifically, I think they took the wrong power to swap for AS. Running through the low levels as I am, I find I really miss having another big hitter to fill out an attack chain. I'd much rather have "Assassin's Attunement" or whatever and Sandman's Whisper. Or add it as a secondary effect to the target of placate (you could change the name to dead zone) or something. The damage of Attune isn't bad, but stalkers really want their DPS in terms of DPA, and not getting a decent backup to open fights with that can reliably take out a minion if your AS whiffs is painful. Alternately, make Stalker Attune front-loaded with damage. One big burst up front and then a low damage DoT to follow it. I'd be willing to forego the "does not alert enemies" as well as the almost-immediate recharge part if the power could be used as a Sonic Melee version of Bone Smasher or something. Admittedly, this will get better as the character's recharge improves and after I get the T9 attack, but I still feel that Attune is a bad fit in a stalker set, expecting slow attrition from an at that's all about burst damage.

I like bringing them out in the last mission of a Synapse. Yeah, they die quickly, but you get to be responsible for a mini rebellion against the Clockwork King.

Just to set expectations: I didn’t want to “race” this character to 50. I’m deliberately taking it slowly, mostly soloing through story arcs, and I didn’t touch Sonic Melee on Beta at all. The concept didn’t initially grab me, but then the name Treblemaker came to mind and that was that. This isn’t a full guide, just first impressions of the set so far. I’ll update as I level if people are interested. I’m level 21 at the moment, so we’re not talking 4 Star ITFs yet. I only a handful of low-level IOs that have dropped or which I had in storage, I'm mostly running SOs. This is my experience as a Sonic/Dark stalker. Attune This is clearly the most contentious power in the set, and I understand why. It doesn’t completely ruin the experience for me, but it has both real strengths and real friction, so YMMV. Attune is a single-target toggle that does a slow but significant DoT and amplifies your other Sonic attacks against that target. It suppresses while you’re hidden, so you can put it on an unaware enemy without breaking stealth; the damage only starts once you’re revealed. What’s good about it? It’s surprisingly effective at disrupting enemies who have interruptible abilities. Sky Raider Engineers are the easiest example: you can drop Attune on one, AS the boss, and the Engineer won’t get their FFG up because the trickle damage keeps interrupting them. It feels very proactive in a way that the game doesn't often encourage, so this stands out. What’s less good? It’s still a toggle. You want it up constantly, which means dragging it from target to target as things die or scatter. Without Attune running, your ST damage feels slightly below average; with it, slightly above average. I don’t know the exact numbers, but the lack of it is noticeable. I don't usually enhance until level 12, because it normally goes so fast, but because I held off on grabbing Attune immediately, my damage felt lackluster in a way that was unpleasant. So you’re encouraged, pressured even, to get it early and keep it rolling nonstop. The sound effect is also loud. Very loud. If anyone knows the internal name so I can silence it, you’ll have my eternal gratitude. There’s also a build-pressure angle. Stalkers already want early AS, Placate, Build Up, status protection, and their main defensive tools. Needing to wedge Attune in early too makes the low-level power curve feel even more crowded. Playing without it feels anemic; playing with it feels like one more spinning plate. There’s another issue with Attune that becomes obvious once you play around with it for a bit: it demands animation time without paying that time back in immediate impact. In most melee sets, your T3 power is either a heavy single-target attack or a cone; something that justifies a bit of animation with a meaningful chunk of damage delivered as ST or AoE. Attune does neither. It’s a setup move, and setup moves only feel good when the set rewards you for using them. The damage it offers accumulates to be significant. But that's very much outside of the Stalker philosophy. The rest of the set The yellow “-res(debuff)” visuals still look strange to me, but the mechanic is interesting. Stalkers get a baked-in -ToHit in Assassin’s Strike, so technically you’re getting at least one boosted effect, but at only 5–6% extra effect per stack, the benefit isn’t huge, to say nothing of the unlikeliness of performing a slow AS after having hit them with other attacks. Generally, this will be more of an incidental team play bonus than something you'll benefit from solo, except with a few specific armour sets, and even then the debuff is small enough to make it mostly irrelevant. It feels like it's mostly just there because Sonic's thing is -res(damage), and the devs didn't want lots of that in a melee set, you do still get to apply that with your AS, though. What’s more notable is the status effects sprinkled through the set. • T1 has a chance for knockdown. • T2 has a chance for hold. • Assassin’s Whisper is a Mag 5 sleep, so anything you AS and don’t kill will most likely be asleep unless it has purple triangles. Unfortunately, Assassin’s Whisper does not allow sleep sets, so you can’t slot Fortunata’s Hypnosis: Chance for Placate, which would have been probably the best possible use for it. The proc chances for the status effectsare low, so you’re not turning into a miniature Stalktroller (Stalminator?), but slotting a Lockdown +2 Mag proc in one of the early attacks might be an interesting experiment later. In closing That’s where things stand at level 21. The rest of the set has charm, but Attune is the piece that isn’t landing. It’s an “attention tax,” it doesn’t move with your target, and it eats animation time without giving you the kind of immediate impact every other melee T3 offers. The delayed payoff is real, but it doesn’t feel good in the rhythm of a Stalker’s chain, and the damage bump doesn’t quite justify the micromanagement. If it behaved more like a PBAoE buff, or simply auto-shifted to your current target, the whole set would breathe better. Even so, the kit has enough texture (status effects, utility moments, and a distinct identity) that I’m curious to see how it develops with a full chain and proper slotting. I’ll keep levelling Treblemaker and update once I can see how the set performs in the 30–40 range, where melee sets usually reveal their real shape. Edit: I decided to test the volume of attune with a dB meter on my phone at about 1' from the speaker. Not the most accurate thing, but good enough for my needs. I was getting a baseline of 53-55dB when just getting ambient noises. Most of the other powers - Sonic Thrust, Strident Echo, and Assassin's Whisper took me to between 60-63db. Attune? Maxed out at 72dB. So, from your ear's perspective that's about twice as loud. Very disruptive when you are expected to reapply it 2-3 times per fight.

The irony here is that the very thing you’re “correcting” me about, that American English isn’t a single uniform accent, applies just as strongly to French. Parisian French isn’t Occitan, isn’t Bretonnais, isn’t Lyonnais, isn’t Réunionnais, isn’t Algerian Maghrebi, isn’t Québecois, isn’t Acadian. No major language is a monolith. But that diversity is beside the point. My argument wasn’t “there is only one American accent” any more than I’d claim “there is only one French accent.” The argument is that no accent in any variety of French produces the kind of orthographic butchery shown in the original text. It’s not dialect, it’s not idiolect; it’s just anglocentric misuse of a diacritic as decoration. Every "é" in the original text, if we read it as French, sounds approximately like "ay" (there's no y-glide in French, so it's not entirely the same, but in IPA terms we're talking about [e] as opposed to [ei]). So what you should be reading is: That isn't a French accent. It's also not the accent of someone speaking any language that uses "é" differently, such as Gaeilge [e:], Portuguese [ɛ], Vietnamese [e˧˥] (tone-dependent) or Icelandic [jɛ]. It’s the same kind of anglocentric disrespect you see when people throw Я, Ф, or И into English words to make them look “Soviet.” The creator isn’t thinking about language or phonetics. They’re treating someone else’s writing system as a novelty font. It doesn’t resemble Russian, it doesn’t resemble French, and it doesn’t resemble any real accent. It’s just aesthetic appropriation of symbols they don’t understand.

If they're going for a French accent, not like that. This is the equ'alent of try'ng to simulate an Am'can ac'ent by sim'y d'pping ran'om le'rs and re'acing them with apo'rophes. The result isn't anything like the American accent and kinda makes a vaguely offensive caricature.

Not sure if this is actually a bug or just a really strange decision for the animation, but when you use the interruptible version of Assassin's Whisper, shortly after going into the "charge up" phase, a sonic wave effect flies sort of diagonally up and away from you. It doesn't do anything to the enemy, it's just kind of present. Then, about a half second later the attack proper fires and you get the power animation.. I don't know if this is a a power effect that's being called at the wrong time, or aimed at the wrong place, but it looks unintentional. (starts at about 1 sec into the attached clip) Assassin's Whisper.mp4