ThatGuyCDude

I've been dwelling on this kind of approach too recently. Given Tanks are currently under revision, I went down memory lane about possible Brute niches. My suggestion last year was an activation power for Brutes that would hold a group of enemies, building on the notion that control is a form of damage mitigation that doubles as threat management for the entire party, and playing off Dark Armor's existing terrorize mitigation design. Having slept on that idea for a year, it's clear a click isn't the solution, but a Fury-based debuff could be. Anything but a hold won't make a difference, though, because of the Interface Incarnate Slot. A Brute applying -toHit penalties with their primaries won't be any different than somebody else doing it with all of their powers anyway. Perhaps instead a toggle that--when on--gives all Brute attacks a chance to apply a hold, with probability based on how much fury the bar has. Holds slow fury gain [lack of 'being attacked' generation], but if the bar is closer to full that's less of a problem. Also, being a toggle, you always have the option to turn it off if the control portion of the party has it covered (or in situations where you don't WANT the enemy to be held, like when you're leading them to a vantage point). ...Call it "Paralyzing Fury" or something. I dunno... workshop it. Under the hood it'd have to be a bunch of separate Mag 1 hold abilities separated by tier so they could stack; that's not a problem though because then the trigger rate by Fury percentage could be adjusted for recharge time.

For the benefit of costume theming, as well as using an epic pool to add an additional accessory to a character, I suggest the more mundane mace and axe models (such as the shovel, the fire and lumberjack axe, the baseball bat, and the wrenches) be added to the Arachnos Mace item slot as options, so that they are usable by Bane Spiders and anybody who takes the Mace Mastery pool. I want to bat a web grenade at my enemies, or give my fireman sentinel a fire axe at level 35 (the kind used to chop down doors, not the kind actually MADE out of fire). I suspect others might be interested in the same.

I do rather like the corporate offices map that comes up frequently. That said, I think it would have better pacing if the first floor (with the lobby) and the second floor (with the two skywalks) were selected randomly as the entrance and only one of them was present on each 'radial' mission. Compared against the Astoria-style caves that also pop up from that contact, they do run a bit long... removing one floor from the picture would help make the pacing more consistent. In short, I agree!

Haven't had a chance to try them yet, but... if the captions are too long, wouldn't it be better to shunt that text into non-progression clues and souvenirs instead? That way players looking for the lore can take their time with them in a solo or repeat run, whereas teams would only need to worry about the broad strokes. Older missions from Live handle lore that way, letting players engage as much or as little as they like. Just deposit them into the player's clue repository when the walls of text would occur, with the pop-up captions being summaries instead. EDIT: Okay, I've played about half of Alexander's arc and I see the problem clearly now (and clues are not the solution). Captions need about a three-line limit to allow the average player enough time to read them before the next one comes along. The long ones definitely need to be broken into more bubbles.

Men were REAL men! Women were REAL women! And small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri! (How would the new models be selected? Power customization? Randomly? Random might interfere with henchmen/pet naming conventions, unless the game starts tracking pet names by model instead of pet slot number. EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm on board with any customization or variety expansion in the game... just trying to wrap my head around how the devs might handle the details.)

I've never seen the problem on Savage Leap, but Savage Leap's teleport order is different: it spawns the pseudopet immediately (instead of after .8 seconds) and then the teleport occurs .1 seconds after the activation, so if you miss you don't teleport at all. That might actually be beneficial to White Cap, since if the power fails you'd remain out of the fray. Trading the White Cap priority so that the teleport occurs at .8 seconds after activation and the pseudopet at .7 might be the fix it needs.

I wonder if there's a way to move the procs off the initial hit onto the pseudopet instead; this sounds like the same mechanism that Burn was originally using to double-proc (one for the activation that spawns the pseudopet, and one for the pseudopet itself). If the procs could be called on the pseudopet instead of the initial hit, that would ensure it's spawned before proc damage can defeat the original target, right?

While a dice roll's true for a single proc, having 'em in a bunch of different powers would increase that probability (three attacks would make it like a coin flip each rotation). The idea was to chance for a consistent bonus control, a happy mitigation every few attacks. With Oppressive Gloom running, that would make regular attacks on a focused boss target have a chance to spread the stun. I already do this with fears using the Presence pool and Cloak of Fear (can even fear Elite Bosses, or ArchVillains when they don't have their purple arrows of doom up), but that's dependent on Mag 2s from three sources. If Triumphant Insult and Unspeakable Terror had been Mag 2s, I could've chanced a similar outcome from them, Pounding Slugfest, and Oppressive Gloom, but no such luck... having to use that many slots to chance stacking Mag 1s up from 4 to 6 (when they only last 3 seconds instead of 8 ) just isn't worth it.

I forgot about the Stalker terrorize, it's been a while since I played mine. I think that's the way to handle it, as a general buff to stealth and a doubled buff to stalkers: make the player drop a 'typically standard perception' radius (of 50 feet so bosses, snipers, and turrets would ignore it) brief terrorize on dropping stealth, just enough to make the mobs go 'Oh!'... and make the stalker version triggered by dropping Hide more effective. The current stalker Terrorize is a Mag 5 with a 25% chance to trigger within 30 feet of the Assassinate target, so that could become the unstealth baseline and Stalkers could get a buff to 100% within 100 feet (so only snipers aren't startled, and then only if they're out-of-range). The stalker version also currently lasts 8 seconds, whereas standard stealth could get by with--say--2. The game currently handles this as a rider to the Stealth Assassin Strike pseudo pet (it's a debuff called "Demoralized"). I wonder if similar pseudo-pets could be spawned as a PBAoE on the character when a stealth power is suppressed. To make it fair, have game mobs drop a similar terrorize on the player when they drop stealth.

You'll also lose all your alignment points, so if you were close to 10 in a category it might be better to get there and do the alignment swap mission before resorting to Null the Gull (otherwise you're going to lose out on 40 merits). I believe you also lose all of your alignment tips.

I agree that the inclusion of enemy reaction time for unstealthing to represent surprise would be a welcome addition. I wonder how the devs would go about coding it, though... a high-priority brief animation feint attack that does nothing and has a VERY long cooldown, to stall them for about one attack? Some sort of brief placate into taunt aura when Stealth is canceled? *Shrug*

For Earth, you can use the crystalline Quartz Devouring Earth, the granite Devouring Earth, and the mushroom Fungoid Devouring Earth (up to you which order to put them in, but I think granite being last is a nice parallel to Earth Armor). I agree there's not much to work with for water models, you'll end up with Hydra sludge soldiers or water bubble mini-Sallys... which isn't terrible, but probably isn't what people are picturing for 'elemental' henchmen. You could do Electric with the Sprites (of Croatoa, like the Wisp prestige pets), the Gremlins (of Cap au Diable, as you mentioned), and the Lanaruu Storm Elementals (of the Shadow Shard): that might make for an interesting entourage.

Aw man, it's only a Mag 1? Dang, I thought all the procs were Mag 2. Guess I could switch those for Mocking Beratements for the extra proc damage, or even Pounding Slugfest since I just checked City of Data and at least those are Mag 2 stuns. I was wondering why I wasn't seeing any stuns between Fear phases... of course I wouldn't if they typically only work on minions. Oof, even the Control Hybrid incarnate that boosts magnitudes wouldn't help with that... what a waste. Well, looks like I'll be doing some aggressive re-slotting! Thanks for the info, everybody. (Really wish that these enhancements would list the magnitude of their effects in the description!)

With regards to the original post: If Awakens are allowed as part of the challenge, waiting for a level to rez would keep the character alive (since the rez is identical to a large Awaken inspiration). I'd say if the agreed rule is 'no hospital', the character would still count as alive. That would allow for team and self rezes, though, so it's soft on the Iron Man premise. If you wouldn't have counted an awaken or a self-rez power as survival, then leveling to rez doesn't count either. I think that 'no debt' is an excellent metric for the live-die question of an Iron Man, since it's something that can be readily checked in badge progress. ...That may also suggest that you could still attempt a wakie/rez without going to the hospital if you've got day job progress as a Mortician. With regards to the necro post (@Waljoricar): Ambushes are extremely dangerous, but even more so for Stalkers. The suggestion Owl Girl pitched--to research and avoid missions that have ambushes--is sound advice. If that feels like cheating or an interruption of natural play, you could stick to random missions (Scanner/Paper missions). The Concealment power pool has an intangibility power [Phase Shift] that makes you invulnerable while it's toggled on. It'll cost you two extra powers to take, but it's a nice panic button that lets you take a minute and pop some inspirations (Note, it will NOT remove DoTs you're currently suffering, so you still have to think fast or it won't save you). It could keep you alive in an ambush situation while your enemies use up their stronger cooldown attacks... might be worth a try.

So... because of PokeVoke (Fury's taunt effect), Brutes have the interesting phenomenon of being able to slot Threat Duration into LOTS of their Primary and Secondary powers (pretty much all of them). This lets you slot Threat sets in strange places, which gives additional access to Psionic Damage procs and Stun procs. When I mentioned this in general chat one night, other players were surprised that this was possible... so it's either new or something nobody's ever bothered with. At the moment I'm trying to use two-set Triumphant Insults to proc stuns and score extra recovery, in search of some kind of Brute scrap-troller unique archetype identity (I'm running Savage/Dark and I'm stacking controls with Fears, IO stuns, and Knockdowns... I can even get up to a Mag 6 fear using the Presence pool). I'm wondering, though... has anybody else done any frankenslotting with Threat Duration sets on a Brute? Does access to Psionic damage help on a proc bomb power, or is it mostly a throwaway feature?