Clave Dark 5

I guess I'm crazy in that I rarely respec toons. On the other hand, I often don't play them past 50, or just never take the time to do the homework to make a build. I have followed builds from first level and up and started slotting whatever set soon as I could, while just filling in "the purple slots" with some crafted level 25 SOs. I dunno, nine times out of ten I just go with my gut and a few passes over write-ups of the power sets with "take this but not that, slot it roughly like this" and call it good. I have noticed a lot of builds are awful if you exemplar down; one tank build I'm working towards took taunt at level 49. I had to adjust that obviously as my tank's still only 30 or so. I just respecced my first 50 and her build probably won't exemplar down half as well as she used to (too few slots in her heal at lower levels, for one thing), but it's better than what they had in the build originally.

Look if poor Grumps has finally found something to bring a smile to that weary, irritated visage, let them have it!

I can't recall for sure, but I think I did log out and back in on that Halloween-decorated park, once.

I've built my current MM, perhaps not well but, for a tankermind and BG mode hasn't seemed to do me too many favors either. I mean, it's not like I'm dying every other mob or anything, but... maybe I just don't 100% get it somehow. My MM himself could be tougher, have more defense or resists or something, which I'll be looking into here as he just hit 50. I've often left them in defensive follow and then set up the mob and walked into them, which triggers the alpha strike which in turn triggers my Mercs to uh start triggering. It's a decent way to live, I guess, but I thought it might feel more awesome somehow, more like a tank, I guess?

Americans: The Original Min/Maxers

This is why they nerfed AE exploits? Maybe they were bad at predicting just how extreme the players might go for it, but...

You're always steam rolling until you don't notice the War Walker in that one mob, or you go up against some Malta.

You're leaving out the urge to play dragon atop your mound of merits, swimming amongst them like some sort of demented Scrooge McDuck.

I avoided all that nonsense before shut down, but have looked into it some and it's OK, just as long as you'r not stuck endlessly grinding it forever and never play anything other than your 50.

Vicious Rikti monkeys!

I normally have no idea what power sets other people on my team have unless I see them use one I've played before and therefore recognize, so all I can offer for an answer is "a well-played tank."

Yeah, I've had a bad experience or two before and couldn't bring myself to log in for a few days at least, just cuz. I know that wasn't the game's fault though, just that one jerk. To the OP: that was just one jerk. Take time off if you need to, but we hope to see you back because you're the kind of kind player we like around here.

One more annoying thought: make your build as easy (and flexible) to alter as your costume, instead of having to resort to all-or-nothing respecs. I accidentally put one slot where I didn't want it? Fine, I'll pay a fee to remove it and then and move it over to this power. Decide I don't want this power at all? Drop it and choose from one that was available at that level insread. Respecs would be like free tailor fees, "click here to pay with free respec token." This could be quit e a decent Inf sink for the game and would keep rebuilding/respecing from being such a nightmare of a time suck. I have no idea if this is feasible or not, though.

Fair point. It probably would have been shortly after it was introduced then.

Regarding access to the Patron Pools, walk into Pocket D and cross over the villain's side (where it's all red). There's a large box truck parked there and there's a seagull sitting on it. Click on him and after a bit of preamble he'll tell you about his powers; one off them is changing your alignment - instantly! Boom, you're a villain and can now cross over to do the arc to get that patron pool.

Minus the superheroes/villains, it sounds like any failed nation IRL, which "function", or do at least exist. So I don't think it's that ridiculous. Maybe some new content could sell this a bit more, even. Maybe some hero arcs in RI (and then villain ones blueside too!).

I'm way late to this and I'm sure people have already covered these bases, but let my pitch my two pennies in as well, in no particular order. 1) Power balancing -- There's an excellent rundown in the Mastermind section about why Merc under perform, which has ferreted out it's because the animations they use for their attacks are too slow. There's tons of info out there like this from players and their years of play that could be used to rebalance under-performing powers. 2) Clean-Up -- Those TFs that send you all over multiple zones from hell and back, acrs that always place the entrance doors at extreme corners of the map. All sorts of clean-up actually, heck even #1 up there is part of it. Another one would be something with the Invention system - so many fairly useless IOs in there, like how many people bother to slot Discouraging Words in any capacity? Maybe remove the levels restrictions on all IOs. 3) Fix AE -- Despite that list of otherwise good ideas back what, page two of this thread? I didn't see this mentioned there. AE became more broken as a story-telling tool as time went on before shutdown, and the then-devs (Elder Devs?) had given up on it as that's not the sort of "new content" they figured many people wanted to see. The biggest of these problems I can recall is every spawn on the map calling out their first lines of dialogue the second you step onto their map. Spoilers! Well received content could then be somehow integrated into the game more organically it seems to me to avoid that "I'm standing in this one AE room all the time" problem that AE usually suffers. Might even do away with the AE building and just make it a terminal on a street like some merit vendors. I quite enjoyed the AE back when it worked for story-telling and think it could be utilized as a good resource to generate new content for the game, but after one quick peek at it after HC started up, I've been avoiding it. 4) More Low Level Content/Stories -- I know everyone is hype for Incarnate stuff and so on, but continuing to add more less-than-50 content will keep leveling fresher and give us fresh reasons to taunt people who PL using farms! Joking, but you know, it really would be nice to see.

Ah, solid point regarding first choice, I missed that part. The build doesn't have any good room to pick two of them, so I'll settle for Gloom then.

I've seen this a few times from pretty squishie players (like a Blaster who always ran ahead to make the first attack - and believe me, their toon did not have a build to support such risks) and put it down newbies who're not really sure what they're doing yet. But yeah, I just went with and tried to keep them healed or to more quickly take down their foes or whatever I could to prevent them from dying so often, based on the character I was playing at the time.

So I'm working to adapt a build I found here for an Elev/TW/Soul tank (sorry, I can't recall who posted it) and was looking at a couple of powers they took from Soul Mastery. They went with Gloom and Darkest Night, which seem fine enough, but it struck me that Dark Obliteration, if I'm reading this right, is a multi-target attack whereas Gloom is single. They slotted it wit Thunderstrike for damage, but were I to slot one of them with Cloud Senses or Siphon Insight, they'd provide just a few better points for +Def (and the +ToHit Debuffs), although obviously sacrificing damage potential. I was thinking of making these changes because Dark Oblit, being multi-target, would be better for the taunting crowds effects, following the usual tanker ideals of grabbing and holding agro, but maybe I'm missing something, like "you can always use more damage" or something; if so, then also slotting a +ToHitDebuff set instead of a damage set would also probably be a bad idea. And maybe there's something to be said for some single target attack that I can't think of right now? If it helps, I almost always team rather than solo. If anyone has an opinion on this, I'm more than happy to hear it as I'm not too experienced with tankers yet, thanks!

Herding's not a bad idea, and calling where you're herding to is fine too, I've appreciated it from tanks in the past. The rest of that though is pretty dumb, yeah. The only time I've seen such prima donna actions though were from a brute who was mad at my Dom for, you know, holding foes (the gall!) instead of letting them hit him. Fortunately that was back long before shut down, so that tells you how often I've seen such nonsense.

Greed on the seller's parts, lazy entitlement on the player's parts. You know, the bad side of human nature.

Ah, this is bringing back memories... back when I first started playing, say around issue 6? for the first couple of years, some gold seller was always standing around the black market on Cap. I always took pleasure in reporting them and even sometimes went over to grief them in person visually or by standing there and telling them I'd reported them. What?! I was a villain, after all.

I've been tempted to take one of those two for awhile now, just cuz they're both cool! But now's probably not a good time for them.

I considered it, but I've heard it drops your toggles when you use it. The character I'm building is a tanker, so I would have to settle for re-toggling a lot if I went that rout. I mean, I could do that and have an extra power slot, but I can be lazy.