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The typical time to wait to board a train is 10 seconds. The maximum amount of time I've timed when 'just missing' a train (or otherwise the conductor is being a jerk) is 15 seconds. I mention these times as a point of comparison for the proposed lockout periods.

You get 3 builds for each character. The only subtle issue is that for a VEAT character that picks "Crab", all builds will be stuck with the Crab backpack. My personal preference is a Huntsman/Bane, but I used to take my body-swapping Fortunata/Widow through a LOT of crazy content. I preferred the Fortunata (despite it's reliance on Psi and Epic attacks) because of the extra amount of controls I baked into it. The most annoying to play for me was a Crabbermind. It was a fun proof-of-concept but I found it to perform at a lower level than a Hunstbane.

I want to say that I got an Astral merit on a sub-50 as part of a reward from the Pirate event. As for SSA... I am somewhat certain that the reward option for Astral merits (at least as repeat rewards) doesn't show up until 50.

If a player is starting to consider leveraging %damage from procs, here are some quicky rules: 1) If the power has a base recharge time < 15 seconds, it is probably a poor choice for %damage 2) AoE are generally better places to put %damage than single target The alternative to franken-slotting is pursuing set bonuses... especially Global Recharge and Accuracy (for %damage powers)

This is a comment I was tempted to make, but since I typically don't bother with Hasten at all... better to say "I never plan to have Hasten in a build".... I wasn't sure how it would land. I definitely agree that unless something like Domination is in play, it is highly unlikely that perma-Hasten is critical. The End cost hits the same, and a tiny bit of lost recharge when Hasten is not in play (99% instead of 100%) is unlikely to make a difference in outcomes.

I don't see any disagreement about -Resistance. The only point of contention from my POV is if Venomous Gas is a worthwhile addition to (some) builds. T9s aren't "auto-win" powers! For the snarkiest among us: As a PBAoE toggle, it isn't very different than Dark Armor's Cloak of Fear in terms of "how to use"... for those of us (me, anyway) who used it before the recent changes it took some effort to get it to be useful, otherwise the common (and unwrong) opinion was that it was pretty skippable. Armor sets of course are designed for characters to stand in melee, whereas the Poison set really doesn't have the survival powers in its own set to reliably stand among enemies... the -ToHit from VG is just one of those things that isn't guaranteed to make a difference (because of the floor/Def softcap, because of enemy positioning, etc.) The discussed "strategies" for using VG sound a LOT (to my ears) like the old "let the tank do his thing before attacking", which has not been an efficient team strategy for decades... and of course the sunset Blaster nuke changes as well as the HC triviality of access to global +Recharge bonuses (should) have reset a LOT of Live-era thinking. For me: Venomous Gas is a niche power. Poison has other debuffs that come very early, with the primary drawback being that the player has to actively target opponents... but considering that most mobiles in a spawn get KOed without a PBAoE debuff, IMO there just isn't enough return on the investment(s), such as: picking the T9 (at 26 or 30), those levels are a good time to pick a 3rd or 4th pool power investing in extra survivability just to be able to jump into melee range investing in slots for the debuff (which are Schedule B, except for the Endurance cost) As I noted in my comments about Cloak of Fear... making VG practically "work" such that it is having a reliable, noticeable effect is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If VG was location or enemy-targeted, I'd feel different about it. Poison isn't a bad set, but it has got some stinker powers... VG is IMO one of the least practical, but the worst IMO is the single-ally Antidote. Frankly: along with the minimal need for Alkaloid and Elixir of life in most builds, I feel like Poison deserved a revamp more than Dark Armor!

I run the game on three different rigs, at different times. The desktop with a relatively modest video card (NVIDIA GeForce) and the 'gaming' laptop with a AMD Radeon graphics set do fine. The 3rd rig is an 'office' laptop without a dedicated video card and it is extremely poor in terms of game performance. Wifi or wired don't have much of an effect, as near as I can tell. My gaming laptop wasn't cheap but it wasn't really high-end... although it has been powerful enough to do a lot of audio and video processing that take the other rigs more time. For CoX, as long as you get a laptop with a dedicated GPU, you should be ok.

This also aligns with my own experiences. Players don't typically coordinate enough to leverage the percentages, so scenarios that ignore player behavior as well as RNG and mobile positioning are at best asymptotic hypotheticals. ITFs can be especially cruel because of the DDR, -ToHit debuff or not.

This comes dangerously true to describing my thinking about -Resistance... ...where the quote doesn't accurately describe my thinking about -Resistance is this: If -Resistance can be shown to have a reliable reduction in effort to defeat whatever, and the -Resistance isn't otherwise compromising my personal playstyle (or build goals)... I'm reaching for the -Resistance. I agree: -Resistance is a force multiplier. If I'm running a Mastermind, or something else with pets that are damage dealers... -Resistance will speed up my solo times. .. but a lot of this has to do with henchmen and pets being generally worse than players at defeating spawns. I'll also reach for -Resistance when I'm playing something that will absolutely be hanging close with the enemy and not otherwise being susceptible to being defeated or unlikely to defeat the enemy in one or two attacks. (*) As I noted in this thread long ago... for my playstyle VG wasn't helping clear spawns, for my team efforts, I was having to compromise too much in my build to be "at the heart of it all" just to have VG (possibly) contribute. For those teams, I started hanging back (or keeping VG toggled off) and I didn't notice a change in our team's performance. For single targets with large sacks of health, Envenom's -Regen is not insignificant, and it has a larger amount of -Resistance than Venomous Gas... and the -Resistance of Envenom is for All damage types. As I wrote, I'm not anti -Resistance. (*)The question of "how many attacks to defeat?" gets really tricky once %damage from procs is in play. %damage is inherently unreliable, and most proc-bombed attacks use procs with different types of damage.

In my experience, the dominant "math" is "how many more attacks to defeat the spawn?". If only 70 more damage will do the trick, doing 12% more than 70 to defeat the spawn isn't speeding up defeat times by 12%. By the time this sort of debuff has a measurable effect... we are either talking about playstyles that can be considered "inefficient"(*1) or are of limited circumstance(*2). Even when adventures are advertised as "kill most", it is extremely rare that I see a team trying to "kill most"... of course I have to remind myself that 51% of spawn defeats would qualify as "most". (*1) for example, in some circumstances 'dragging' bosses from one spawn to the next can be more efficient than standing around to defeat a boss. (*2) for example, standing around next to a GM or some other bag of HP.

This explains 90% of the Giant Monster balance pass(es). My own opinion is that if the initial pass simply increased the base ToHit of the Giant Monsters, we'd have gotten almost all of the way to making them as difficult to handle as a majority of folks thought they should be. Eventually we got to this point, but now we are also stuck with all the other stuff that came along the way. This isn't me complaining about the new attacks that the Giant Monsters got, this is me complaining about how "buff HP and resistances" was probably the least interesting approach to "making them harder".

If I was in a position to direct actions... and this was a 'hot topic'.... I'd suggest that the development team work on a NEW shape-shifting AT, sort of "starting from the ground up" to see what sort of balance issues need to be considered, how to address the 'form changing' etc... and then perhaps apply any lessons learned to the Kheldians. My own sentiment is that the Kheldians (as an AT, as a story source) were something of a development dead-end... even though I enjoyed them on Live and have a handful on Homecoming. In contrast: I find the VEATs to offer much more variety (including costume options!) for me to build and play... even though they've also got their own arc. I know that the forced VEAT respec can be something of a PITA, but the flexibility that comes with it really outweighs the HEAT path(s) IMO. If there was a choice between a new AT that followed either the HEAT or VEAT model, with no guess as to what it might be... I'd pick the VEAT model.

In terms of the "changeling exploit" (or Brute/Tanker "nerfs") soloing AVs is (based on my reading of the forums) a big part of what players consider to be 'over-performing'. I didn't make the world, I just live in it. Specific to Kheldians... there are a couple of points in the Kheldian arcs when a solo player will end up facing an EB that does its own 'form shift' and becomes a REAL PITA to deal with... these aren't even TFs, so it isn't like a solo player just doing their thing won't end up being over-matched. As for a potential revamp... I think such a thing is both technically hard (because changing forms is the reason for the HEAT) and the exploit (such as it is) isn't game-altering. The way I see this: someone on the HC team would have to REALLY want to change it, have a strong particular vision of HOW to change HEATs, and muscle the change through. I'm not saying it won't happen... but this seems to involve a LOT for a marginal set of ATs.

I can't speak to the volume of "policing" that happens, but I certainly see examples of intense policing from time to time, and it almost always bothers me. I recognize when I come close to 'crossing a line' w.r.t. to the behavior of other players with Giant Monsters in the open world (mostly because I find them to be sloppy) but for the most part there isn't anything in the game worth getting that upset about. For "ToT leagues", I'd be just as bothered by PI leagues full of sub 30s that aren't contributing any useful powers as I'd be bothered by someone AFK. For crying out loud, that level 10 could be running a bunch of Leadership toggles if nothing else.

Even though IOs scale down with level, I don't think there is much of a reason to have three slots in Hasten. My own experience with Blasters has been that I typically do not need the Numina +Regen/+Recovery piece.... of course, I rarely bother with Hasten, so perhaps for your build it makes a difference. The build looks like it is chasing perma-Hasten just to chase perma-Hasten. If you end up playing it, I suggest you run some solo content without Hasten just to see if it feels like it makes a difference or not. I'd take Tidal Forces before Build Up. On my Water Blast I usually end up with two of the "Build Ups", but Tidal Forces is always first.