tidge

I can explain why I tend to not take Leviathan Mastery, even though I agree that "Sharks are cool". I'll stick with Defender-specific reasons, but some of these are applicable to other AT: The biggest reason is that I prefer to have my characters' core powers, including attacks and controls, well-established before the Epic/Patron pools become available. Unless such a power wasn't available at an earlier level, I simply don't find the AoE attacks/controls to be a good use of slots, and especially not single-target controls. MMV, my thinking is this: If I have to invest slots in Epic/Patron powers to make them sing, then those slots are almost certainly ones that I could be using on lower level powers. I exemplar all the time, so I tend to see slots put in higher level powers as wasted. I can of course have multiple builds, but that is a more advanced form of character crafting. To expand on the point above... Spirit Shark Jaws looks to be an excellent single-target Hold. Hold powers offer the opportunity to slot for some excellent set bonuses, as well as for %damage. My issue is that this power won't be available for content below level 36. I'd lean to the set bonuses and try to increase hold duration, but maybe 3xGladiator's Net, and then %damage... but Defenders who want to improve DPS get better results by adding %damage to AoE (i.e. other) powers... so essentially this starts to feel like (to me) like a rule of cool choice. The next biggest reason is that the alternate choices for Epic/Patron pools offer different sorts of powers, and often those other choices don't require many slots to be excellent. This is min-max thinking of course. I think Storm/Water/Leviathan is a fine thematic choice.

A good point worth repeating was made: Setting aside the applicable (but not for new characters) comment about "HO", I want to repeat the point about the Enhancement sets with pieces that increase multiple, individual aspects of a power when slotted. Using pieces like these (from different sets, or from the same set) is a good way to "enhance more" of a power using fewer slots.... plus of course the possibility of getting enhancement set bonuses. There is an inherent "diminishing returns" effect, known colloquially as "ED (Enhancement Diversification)... which would be worth learning about before planning on doing something like slotting more than two of the same level 50 IOs. Elsewhere on the forum there was a recent post by a player who appeared to believe that 5-slots of IOs in an attack (1x Accuracy, 3xDamage, 1xEndurance) was the "best" way to slot that power... which I disagree with. Yet I suspect the player was relatively new and didn't have a holistic view of build strategy. An easy thing to do in-game is to "hover" a potential enhancement over the power to see what the effect of slotting will be for a given enhancement. It won't factor in things like global bonuses, but it is a quick-and-dirty way to see the first-order effects of adding/replacing an enhancement.

I pretty much use the search function(s) (including /whoall) exclusively for open-world hunts, zone events, and Giant Monster fights. If the player is hidden, obviously I'm not going to notify or invite them. I can live with the cooldown period, because database queries... yet I still find it annoying because the of the 50-player display limit. If I had to guess why there is such a limit, I suspect it is probably more to do with the UI (e.g. window, scrollbar) than anything else... the window UI seems to get flaky above a certain number of lines to display... for example, with recipes. The biggest issue IMO is that I can't query across red/blue/echo sides/zones. Maybe this exists for PvP reasons?

This isn't a super important change, but with the Immobilize powers adding knockback resistance to their effects, I was somewhat hoping that the %proc immobilize would also apply a knockback resistance to the immobilized foes. I can see through testing with the Winter's set Frozen Blast that this is not the case... I'm guessing it is the same for the other proc %Immobilize pieces. At first I hesitated to even make this suggestion, because I wasn't sure if it was possible in the PPM code to add a secondary effect like this to the immobilize, but I sort of believe that this may be possible... if only because in addition to the effect of a PPM we also get a graphical indicator that the %proc was applied. As I led: This isn't a big deal, but I rather like that actual immobilize powers can mitigate a lot of player knockback... so I happened to be looking at options other than KB->KD slotting to (sometimes) do the same trick. If implemented it would not be a particularly great solution (i.e. lead with an attack that includes %immobilize, followup with a KB attack), I think this falls more into the category of requesting a subtle tweak.

Normally, I don't like the sort of default advice to "Slot a Force Feedback %+Recharge" in all/most powers that do Knockback... I especially don't like it for the Energy Blast primary for Blasters. Why you ask? Energy Blast attacks are mostly already pretty quick to recharge The quick recharging attacks don't have good %proc chances Blasters benefit quite a lot from set bonuses (Range, Accuracy, +Recharge, etc.) Energy Blast (and Atomic Manipulation) is pretty much doing pure Energy/Smash damage, an off-type %damage would probably be a better choice than %+Recharge Knockback doesn't bother me, but with the combination of range and melee I think a 100% Sudden Acceleration/Overwhelming Force KB->KD piece in those Knockback AoE might make attack chains go smoother than just hoping for %+Recharge There is something else about this combination (Energy/Atomic) that is I think slightly more subtle and disfavors seeking %+Recharge. There is IMO a nice combination of both range/melee and single-target/AoE attacks available. This allows for a good variety of set choices (again, bonuses) and would allow an Energy/Atomic Blapper to shuffle up attack sequences based on the enemy spawns... this will be most evident if soloing x8 when there will be lots of spawns (that survived Nova) and are not standing near each other. I don't have this specific Blaster Combination, but I do have both Energy primary Blasters and Atomic secondary Blasters. Neither of them need %+Recharge, or Hasten, to be effective murder machines. All of these are "Blappers" that have solid mixes of range/melee/ST/AoE attacks.

You can email yourself Rez inspirations.

Spring-boarding from the two quoted posts: Players tackling +4 low-level TFs/SFs should IMO try to make sure that the attacks they have are slotted for Accuracy and/or the character in play will have +Accuracy/+ToHit bonuses from somewhere. Writing only for myself, this is one of the main reasons why I slot Purple sets in attacks (few Accuracy pieces, but good +Accuracy set bonuses), and if not... I am slotting Accuracy/- pieces from non-Purple sets. Since Homecoming lowered the levels at which T7/T8/T9 powers can be taken, I find it rare that my builds will have something like Tactics available for the lower level content.

This is one of those things where the player who has Clamor's aggro really cannot be standing near other players on the team. That TF at +4 is going to be a challenge, but when a teammate is actively debuffing teammate defenses (courtesy of Clamor), bad outcomes are almost always guaranteed. The most common culprit in this scenario is a melee character standing toe-to-toe with Clamor while other melee characters are trying to get their attacks in. I don't care what other melee/PBAoE powers a 'L33T' Tanker or Brute has: I think player that Taunts Clamor and moves away from the rest of the team is a smarter and better player than 99% of the game's population.

Heh, I just checked: Sting of the Manticore has a level range of 35-50, so there are no set bonuses below level 32! Yeesh! I'll admit this about my (current) slotting preferences for Blaster Snipes: I lost a lot of interest in adding %procs to them after the HC change to them, and even before that I was mostly adding %damage to Stalker/Scrapper versions. I find the %damage to be generally "OK" if used on the "slow" snipes, but after some testing (for my own mind, I didn't collect the data) I found that a faster snipe w/ more global +ToHit was on average yielding more (single-target) damage. I want to say that the experiment was comparing 5x Sting of the Manticore + 1x %damage, on a level 50 build where that 6th slot was moved eslewhere to add a Kismet +ToHit piece, or buff ToHit (and/or Endurance reduction) in a +ToHit toggle. Once I convinced myself that more +ToHit was on average better for Blaster Snipes (if the Snipe is part of a regular attack chain, so mostly the "fast" version is used), I changed my attitude around Snipe slotting for Blasters. This is also one of the reasons why I occasionally use the Experience Marksman set.

I agree with @Frozen Burn about the Snipe sets. I used to like Sting of the Manticore, but I realized I liked it because Scrappers/Stalkers don't get their snipe until the Epic/Patron pools open up. Blasters typically get their snipes so much earlier than that, and the set bonuses for SotM cut out at level 27 IIRC. For Blasters, I am almost always slotting Apocalypse or Winter's Bite in the Snipe. I have one character that had so much intrinsic +ToHit that I 6-slotted Experience Marskman, and leveraged the Fast Snipe. While leveling up, I've used recycled attuned Gladiator's Javelin or Experienced Marksman while I waited for Apocalypse to be slotted.

I have not seen converters at 57K for a while. As for PvP pieces... I can describe my own (increased) interest in some of them, relating to the game changes: (At least) two PvP sets provide a 3-point KB protection bonus for using only three pieces (Gladiator's Armor, Fury of the Gladiator)... with FREEM! now part of the game, I find those two bonuses to be extremely helpful in getting characters to 10/14 points of KB protection just through slotting choices. (14 isn't enough for FREEM! but with a SG base buff, it is). Those sets also tend to offer enhancement of values that characters would want anyway. The PVP pieces (and also Winter) tend to be the ones that have an Accuracy+Endurance components, which I like for franken-slotting attacks. I can speculate that with more players, more have become more attuned (pun kinda intended) to the value of old no-brainer pieces (Panacea, Gladiator's Armor, etc.) as well as the value of boosting, and possibly even franken-slotting powers. Personally? I use (recycled) PVP pieces along with ATO when leveling up. For the final builds, it is mostly Purples, then PVP for certain types of powers, and then Winters get considered.

My opinion: I think the enhancement choices are only part of the issue. A bigger issue IMO is that there are so many attacks, and there isn't a lot of synergy between the Melee attacks/aura/PBAoE and the Knockback from the Energy attacks (and Mace Beam Volley). Web Envelope may be helping to mitigate knockback. I'd say this is a fine rookie experiment to see what all then different attacks do, and then consider trimming back on them an repurposing slots. Minimally, I'd replace at least one of the attacks with Combat Teleport, to be used with the melee/PBAoE followups.

I don't know if it is the best, but I have a FF/Beam Rifle that is pretty good solo, and is an awesome teammate. What I liked about this combo was that I could lean heavily into the Beam attacks (which include -Regen) to add %-Resistance in addition to the -Resistance of Repulsion Bolt. I still don't like Force Bomb, it feels clunky considering what the BR attacks can do, YMMV. The offense and debuffing potential is on top of the Defensive potential from FF. Edit: I want to share this specific opinion about Water Blast and Beam Rifle. I think Water Blast is best used by Blasters, whereas I think Beam Rifle is best used by any AT other than Blasters. I'm not saying those set are wrong for those AT, but playing those sets on different ATs has shaped my opinion. Also, specific to Water Blast: I am not a fan of Water Jet. It used to have a problem (consuming Tidal on a miss) that made it easy to hate, but even after that was fixed I'm not at all impressed with it as an attack. I think the "sometimes you get a fast recharge!" is a lure to pick a somewhat inferior power (and an inferior use of Tidal) I'd use the FF Force Bomb in a FF/Water Defender's attack chain before I picked Water Jet.

I suspect that you've been fighting enemy groups resistant to Smashing and Energy damage. As an aside: Do you know about Attuned Enhancements Enhancement Diversification

The current Group Fly visual effects also makes travel in maps/zones with ambient darkness (e.g. Echo Dark Astoria) terrible.

You seriously misunderstand *my* point about map clear times. I make the point NOT because I think faster map times are better, I make the point because RELATIVE map clear times are a viable metric for how different ATs play the same content. Any AT can be taken through missions at a snail's pace, but the AT that can't stay within a factor of three of other ATs is IMO working from a seriously hampered position.

I always thought an ad homenim attack had to be pointed directly at a specific person... such as "Of course it is a bad idea, it was made by @GenericHero222" There have been occasional random posts accusing forum participants of ad hominem attacks, but less than half the time do I think there has been an argument made ad hominem. Of course, this is just the kind of thing we can expect @tidge to write, so nobody should believe it.

We've been discussing, in several threads such as My personal opinion is mostly this: Because the attacks for Kheldians come at the (mostly early) levels the come at, part of the "design formula" means that those (mostly early) attacks are in aggregate inferior to the sort of options that other ATs get. There is a little bit of "slotting analysis paralysis" as well, since the non-human forms come with so many powers to potentially slot. Kheldians can "make do", but even a well-built, well-played Kheldian falls behind other ATs in terms of map clear speeds, at least in my experience.

Yes. My Warshade took significantly longer to solo the Penny Yin TF at +0x1 than one of my Controllers. This was a very unpleasant experiment, after doing the exact same content with Stalker, Scapper, and Tanker.

I got an Energy/Martial Blaster up to level 50, and completed the level 50 respec. I used savebuild, here is the text of it: I don't quite yet have everything crafted/boosted as I plan to; it should be possible to see where I am missing level 50 IOs and +5 boosts will make sense. The power choices were pretty much taken in the listed order while leveling up. There are two parts of my build I'm not quite sure about and need to do some more testing. #1: I left the Annihilation set in Explosive Blast. This is a set I like to use while leveling up to help a little with Endurance management. Endurance isn't really a problem for this build... until it is... so I have left it in. It could be probably be swapped for another set like Frozen Blast or Ragnarok. I don't mind the enemy scatter, but it could be franken-slotted with a KB->KD piece. #2 I was torn over slotting for Inner Will (I have this on auto) and Reaction Time. While leveling, I had 5x of Preventive Medicine in Inner Will (for set bonus, the 6th piece was in Spirit Ward) but that was out of habit and not really paying off for this character. Inner Will on auto is a bit tricky, because there are some enemies that do very short duration mezz, so I wanted the recharge time on that to be as short as possible. Reaction Time originally only had a single slot, but I recognized that as crazy.

I can't say it is an easy system. I am familiar with it but simply shuffling between the powers and the component crafting menus is weirdly annoying, even when I know what I am doing. I don't keep notes of which components I want (of each rarity) so the random drops send me scrolling through multiple screens. Mechanically, the lockout time an switching is something I understand, but dislike how occasionally it has to be worked around via zoning.

When *I* think about which powers I'd have as a human-looking squid or lobster, I am imagining that I'd basically be playing some other sort of AT, except of course I'd be able to have an awesome survival mode as well as a blasty-mode. As a teammate, and player, of Kheldians... I think it is somewhat important for the team to know which form(s) are being used. I know that I have asked Kheldians to switch/stay in Dwarf form when a team needed aggro management.

As Skyway city is a low level zone, I can easily imagine a low level character doing minor damage to a Supa Troll and not finishing them off. Writing only for myself, when I have a character that is roughly the level range of Skyway, and see that a zone event is in progress, I will take that character to the Northern train station and mess around with whatever Supa Trolls are there. When the Supa Trolls con higher, I put a lot of splash damage on some of them before I decide to head off to some door mission, or whatever.

Most of the Purple sets are very light on Endurance reduction (typically one of six pieces only, e.g. Damage/Endurance in the attack sets), so I always boost those. If the purple set is in a long-recharge power, I'm probably boosting the Recharge pieces. I used to only boost 2xRecharge IOs for Hasten to +4, but because of slow effects and being able to afford the boosters I just make them +5 on the characters that take Hasten. Similarly, boosting Accuracy is never a bad thing, although if it is paired with Recharge and procs are involved I'll crunch some numbers.