tidge

♪ ♪ ...and I want you to show me...♪ ♪ (apologies to Foreigner)

No redraw is my number one wish for Soldiers/Crabs, followed by the chance to lose the backpack on (alternate, secondary) builds that don't have crab powers. I agree that the inherent is really not that good. A beefed up version that improved Endurance management (Global End Discount? Uber +MaxEnd?) would be preferred. Omega Maneuver really ought to have it's recharge time cut. It isn't without uses, but it is a bit of a stinker. The Pets (including the Epic) don't need any changes or buffs. They are recharge-intensive pets that require re-summoning and have level shifts. Soldiers can already beef up their survivability. They aren't henchmen or ever-lasting Controller pets. There are no problems with Widows/Fortunatas... except for the similar complaint about the inherent.

Bio offers a lot of different options when slotting Health and Endurance uniques, and your choices are radically different than mine. On my build, I don't have any extra slots in Health or Stamina. I'm less concerned about Endurance Recovery and Health Regeneration for a few reasons: set bonuses, click powers, and Adaptation (when necessary). It looks like you are taking more toggles than I would run (certainly at lower levels) so we almost certainly have different experiences for a significant range of content. I must admit that I am biased against 2-slotting Luck of the Gambler by default. For low level powers, the bonuses cut out in some content. If you attune them, they can't be boosted... so a generic IO (or Shield Wall) is a better choice. If Endurance is an issue, then Def/End pieces are a better choice, especially if boosted, or HO Cytoskeleton. I know you are chasing S/L resistance, but I think 5-slots of Reactive Defenses (with the Scaling Resistance piece) in Weave would be a better choice (modulo the LotG Global Recharge placement, but with a 6th piece you get 8.75% Global recharge) My build includes Tough, but I rarely toggle it on. If I need more resistance, I toggle it and change Adaptation. I use it as a mule otherwise. I do think that you are doing yourself a slight disservice by taking DNA Siphon when it is first available and NOT turning it into another offensive tool. I have mine 6-slotted with 3 pieces of Touch of the Nictus (including a %damage) and 3 additional %damage procs. I think the third slot in Hide (the LotG Defense piece) is a poor choice of a slot, because of the nature of Hide. I have no complaints about using it to mule the Kismet and LotG global. I have a different choice for Moonbeam. I 5-slot Sting of the Manticore because of the +Damage and +Recharge. I can understand the preference for the late bonuses from the Winter Set.

And then you need MOAR INF to kit out the 2nd and 3rd builds. My entire reason for getting into the VEAT was to have very different builds available on the same character. The freedom from Tough and Weave is a joyous thing. I have other characters that don't use those powers, but my Widows don't even consider them.

This is how I felt with my (non-Fire) Tanker in the early (and later!) days of Live. I'm not ignorant of all the changes since Beta, and generally I feel like the opening up of damage (including via %damage procs) to more ATs has made the game more fun for more players. I appreciate the posts in this thread from other players who've described their experiences (e.g. @Sovera) when trying to leverage %damage versus slotting "full sets". My typical experience has been that my "defeat all" times (against spawns, not pylons) don't really improve with %procs except in a small number of corner cases. I suppose if someone wants to make the case that level 44 Controllers should take hours to clear a x8 map, such a person should be aware that I won't support that argument.

I can't think of a TF/SF that has this restriction (aside from talking to the character assigning TF.SF missions), although I can imagine such a restriction exists for certain content (Dark Astoria NPCs in missions? Signature Story Arcs maybe?)

I stand with @macskull Like it or not: CoX is about dealing (enough) damage (before too much damage is dealt to you). Folks have fun using %procs to DO MOAR (even if it means they do less in ways they cannot see). There are two sides of the damage/be damaged equation; %damage (et al.) procs are only one dimension to one side of that equation.

See also "Talk to Stephanie Peebles" in the Moonfire TF.

I don't have a SR Scrapper, but I do have a SR Stalker. My recommendations are: Take every power from the secondary, except for T9 Elude. Don't bother trying to fit Weave into the build. You will need Tough for some global mules. (You could use Rune of Protection I suppose, but my build couldn't fit the mule until level 49) Slot the Kismet +Accuracy (really +ToHit) in your lowest level Auto power. With Auto powers, don't be shy about slotting boosted (50+5) standard Defense pieces. More controversy around: Consider the Presence Pool to get Unrelenting. It works wonders on high DPS, Defense-based characters. (I also like the set bonuses from Mocking Beratement) Note that if you have decent Recharge, both Rune of Protection and Unrelenting can do wonders for your build.

You bought a few of mine that I had sitting at relatively high sell prices on characters that I'd forgotten I placed. Thanks! Now I have to go back and check all my other 'retired' characters with similar pieces on the market. I also noticed that somebody has got "Inf Fever" buying non-LotG Defense pieces way above what they had been selling at. This strikes me more like a "buy it NAO" but I suppose somebody could be trying to push everyone else out of the LotG market.

I am also a fan of the Overwhelming Force set, although I tend to only use the set while leveling up. It's essentially one of my non-brainer choices for ATs with a lot of offense. The KB->KD is exceptionally good when slotted on Mastermind henchmen, or pets that spawn in multiples. For folks with a level 50 mindset, I can see why the rest of the pieces would be slightly undervalued. As far as marketing, I'm perfectly happy with the roughly 10 MInf prices for each piece in the set. I don't dabble in this as a regular niche so you have nothing to worry about from me.

Here's the thing about call boxes: only one person has to do each one, why would more than 2 people try to race to get to any of them? Racing to a clickie in a mission can use more than one player (to grab aggro), but the whole team racing to the first of several call boxes is not a good look.

In the case of a "stealther", the team lead can stay in the mission and not advance the storyline. The first time this happens, the PUGmates may make a "quick exit", at which point the person with the star can explain their preferred approach and not to make a quick exit in the next mission. Until the storyline is advanced, the team will be at the mercy of the player with the star, so they are a captive audience... so expect folks to let everyone else know how they feel about the approach. For example: when I was "held captive" by the team lead of a Penny Yin TF who wanted to destroy every door in the PPD station "for the badge", despite everyone else leaving, I took the time to identify several Ouroboros missions that could be easily farmed solo for Door Buster... presumably while the team lead was using P2W Shadow Maul to destroy doors. The team leader let me know he thought I was being a jerk, but he didn't kick me.

For the answer to this question, talk to Infernia in the RWZ.

And if thy PUG offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole PUG should be cast into hell. If someone is forming a SF/TF and doesn't want to "speed", consider running it with only 4 members but set at x8. Not only will you reduce the chance of having one (or heaven forbid, a majority) of PUGgers that would prefer to play another way, but the larger spawn sizes will slow things down. We've already had the discussion about why folks won't turn up the difficulty on a Synapse TF (Too slow! Waa!) so there really aren't than many more dials to turn. I suppose players can run content all solo with signature summons/temporary summons/henchmen and just pretend to be "boss of the world."

IIRC, the P2W powers still scale with the AT damage scale. This would mean that by picking a Blaster and using P2W attacks you really aren't "gimping" as much as you would with a different AT. A Blaster with %procs in attacks is gimping your build, but in an indirect way.

I have absolutely no problem with a player striking out on their own in "defeat all" missions if they can handle it, and wouldn't make things go faster by having 8-players stick together. The only thing I expect is that those players take care of all their own runners, since it can be pretty annoying to discover that a couple of minions were left alive... delaying the mission end for everyone. Synapse can be a bit tricky because of the level (players may not have their full offense and defenses); there have been plenty of times when I've been tempted to skip entire missions (e.g. Bertha). I judge the competency of a Synapse PUG by how they split up to handle the patrol/call box missions.

I saw the note about Soul Tentacles. I'm not a fan of the cone immobilize attacks. In theory, they ought to be helping hold enemies in place to take more (AoE) damage but in practice I haven't observed them to be particularly helpful or easy to use... and I'm a player that really likes cone attacks. I think I have only two builds that use this power (or its equivalent). From memory: one is a VEAT Soldier that primary has it as a mule for a Purple set, another is a Dark Blaster's Tenebrous Tentacles. The TT was a late-pick power that replaced Repulsion Bomb.. another power I don't use much, but I felt that the -Res Annihilation %proc (again, I wanted set bonuses for the Blaster) might be slightly more effective without the scattering effects of Repulsion Bomb. I'm also on the record as being very sour on single-target immobilize powers, which I find to be far too situational to get much value out of... I repeat this complaint here only as some self-reporting that I'm willing to explore related powers. As for Confront v. Provoke, I understand the trade-offs. I also haven't lost sight of a %proc build's need to consider accuracy and recharge. In practice: unless my AT is a Tanker, I almost never care about the auto-hit nature of Taunt/Confront... I am almost always using these sorts of powers to draw as many mobs (and I am aware of the limited number from Provoke, but it is more than Confront!) to me and not hold the attention of a specific enemy. Since so much of the game is focused on "fight as many mobs as possible" the description of Confront as "pull a single enemy from a teammate who is in over their head" is a negative selling point; that is... most of my PUGmates who are in over their heads have the attention of more than one enemy. If I am playing with a Tanker/Brute who is holding the attention of a large spawn, I want to help bring as many extra enemies to the party. The best example I can think of where I ever want to auto-hit an enemy with some sort of taunt is Lord Recluse... and if I am not playing a Tanker I would specifically have a non-primary build focused ONLY on tanking Lord Recluse (which would include the auto-hit taunt power) so that the rest of the TF can deal with the towers.

Ah, sweet summer child. I appreciate your efforts to address the problem of runners (from x8 content). Even though my builds have always included Provoke (as part of the path to Unrelenting and Invoke Panic) the RNG and enemy mezz/control resistances I have found very little I could do to prevent 100% runners on my Fortunata. In the back of my mind I suspect that debuffs are making them even more likely to run, but I'm willing to attribute it only to the RNG and its peculiar rules allowing consecutive misses between AoE and single-target attacks. As I have written: My Fortunata doesn't lean very hard into %damage procs (typically 1 from a set, plus 1 extra) in the damage-dealing attacks, but have you considered adding control/soft control %procs in the powers... %Knockdown is the easiest (soft) control to work in? I apologize if you have done this, but scanning forum builds for %procs makes my eyes water. I'm thinking of the %Hold or %Immobilize pieces. EDIT: I should add, I address this problem by simply aggroing the next group. This keeps my DPS up and eventually the runner will come back to join the mayhem.

I want to echo this. It is very rare in my experience that players will take their characters, even lvl 50s, through low level (team) content set at +4... especially if it is below the cutoff point for certain enhancement set bonuses. I've seen cases where an 8-player PUG (where the leader was leveling) was unwilling to turn up the difficulty on Frostfire, which as most people know will end up with a team facing con gray enemies by the end of it. A TF like Synapse (and it's many defeat alls) will be a slog with difficulty turned up, but in many ways I consider the ITF to be a slog.

A few rando comments: "x8" is only a thing if the team has fewer than 8 players. AFAIK, setting it to 8 on an 8-person team doesn't have any direct affect (assuming folks don't drop between missions, or mid-mission for certain spawns) Even with proposed nomenclature, there will be room for misunderstanding. See below: Misunderstanding abounds... Even on the most straightforward TFs, players will have different expectations. I will point out some approaches that surprise me about the way folks run a Penny Yin and discuss teammate behavior. "This is a speed run, only defeat what we have to" The first mission (crashed copter) does not require the defeat of every group of Freakshow. I've had PUG leaders blow a gasket when I skip the unnecessary spawns. "This is a run for XP" I've observed PUG leaders decide that they wanted to blow up all the doors in the PPD station after everyone else has left the mission... and then complain it was taking them too long. "This is a Kill All" / "This is a run for Badges" I've observed PUG leaders flip their lid when players open up the side doors in the TV Reactor map to "Kill All" and/or get more Tankers/Super Stunners. None of these actions/reactions are worth getting upset about.

Penny Yin Morty Kal Lady Grey I like Penny Yin 'the most' for many reasons, but top of the list is that the level range is at the sweet spot where every AT has come into their class-defining powers and for players who have exemplared down they should still have a lot of set bonuses but not all the late-game powers that make a lot of characters one-man-armies. Playing this at +4 really puts the challenge in being able to hit enemies and be able to deal with effects when they hit you (endurance drain, control effects). The revamped mission design should be applied to a few other blue-side TFs (ehem, Synapse). Mortimer Kal is fun especially when over-anxious folks have accidentally aggroed themselves into a back-room and can't get past (now neutral) Circle of Thorns! I'm a dirty villain and I LOVE seeing this happen because most players are flummoxed as to what to do. (no spoilers, but it isn't hard to figure out how to get out of that trap) The neutral TFs I'm cold on. I find the ITF to be a bit of a grind, and the TinPex ones are a little too much 'Lore based' for my taste. Lady Grey wins by default. The Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Poll option: Signature Story Arc (Who Will Die, part 1)... especially red side. This can be quick or brutal depending on the difficulty setting, with the only downside being the final cut scene. Villains stick around and face off against +20 level Freedom Phalanx for larffs. I think my Stalker did something like 2 HP damage to Manticore... I hit the exit button immediately and was still alpha-striked to oblivion. Looking for a challenge? Here it is.

I don't 'role play' but I do prefer to play lower-level content. At this point I do this almost exclusively with level 50 characters. Aside from being 'better equipped' for low-level missions, the side effect on low-leve missions is that if the difficulty hasn't been cranked up really high many level 50s who are exemplared down can pause during heated combat to chat with the team.

A slightly tangential point: You can log your character out at certain places to get 'day jobs' as well as 'bonuses'; some of the bonuses will grant you recipes and enhancement drops upon the completion of missions (for a limited time). You won't get rich or save much Inf this way, but if you are a new player looking for some extra rewards it is a nice little 'extra'.