tidge

Ha! I was using a text form of another character, so thanks for that catch! I've been building all my new characters in excel, so for a legible text I have to do it manually.

I use Cyrillic in chat, I kinda wish I could also rename pets... but alas, the name entry won't take them.

How did "someone" delete "someone else's" characters? I'm guessing that this wasn't the original player, but rather someone else with access to the original player's account?(*1) Ok, so maybe there is a huge calamity therein, but there is quite some time between Summer 2023 and November 2024... and I know this will come across as being insensitive... but by waiting until 04 November 2024 it really seems like the name wasn't that important. Even if they couldn't have gotten the character(s) to level 6 (takes me about an hour to solo, not using any XP extras), just logging into the character is enough. Writing only for myself: I have some named characters I really like, but I can't quite get around to playing them/crafting a build plan for them... if I lose those names, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . A fraction of those I've at least logged in to buy the names a few more days. Some of them I've been motivated to play! (*1) I'm still somewhat confused, because if the characters had been deleted, then the name(s) would have been available before the name release went into effect. There has to be both a complicated chain of events that leads to both the deletion and subsequent "name release" that I can't help but think of this

This is the level 50 build. The power selection was identical for leveling up; I can explain how I was slotting during leveling but with some experience I think most folks can figure out what works for them. I don't MIDS, so it is text, which make for easier forum discussion IMO. I don't think there is much magical about this build; I'm posting it because for a couple of reasons: I wanted to see how satisfied I'd be using Savage Melee on a Scrapper I wanted to see how satisfied I'd be using a slightly off-brand Armor Savage Melee is probably "better" (damage-wise) on both/either a Brute or Stalker... IIRC Fury improves the damage-over-time components of Savage Melee, and (from a quick glance, but no real study) I think it would be slightly easier to slot the Stalker's secondary, and the Stalker's ATO %procs would provide more damage than the Scrapper's Criticals (for the primary). Energy Aura is probably not a top tier secondary, as it has some holes that need attention. A Brute's higher base HP would probably be better... I found that the various holes were most problematic until I could get more %healing and better global recharge values. Generally: The build is weakest in the 15 seconds when Energize is not providing more Regeneration.... I have Energize on Auto, so when facing tougher spawns I will sometimes wait before engaging them. I skipped Hemorrhage. This build is slow(er) to defeat single hard targets without it, but I didn't need it for a decent attack chain, I generally prefer the large PBAoE from Rending Flurry (and I put a %-Res piece in that to sort of make up for using it against single targets), I didn't see a set bonus I really wanted from another single-target melee attack. Some comments on Force of Will, since I took all five powers. The slotting on Mighty Leap is mostly a Quality-of-Life choice with a smidge of typed defense boosts. Pulling two slots from this is possible, and I *think* the Energy Negative/Fire/Cold typed defenses are the same (or slightly better ~ +0.4) if one of those two slots is dedicated to a Defense IO 50+5 in Power Shield. Wall of Force is IMO important for Melee characters like this. The %procs are pretty reliable, and compliments the damage-over-time... plus knockdown! It requires two earlier pool picks; the build above has Project Will is chosen for the set bonuses, specifically Psi defense and global recharge. Winter's Bit offers some great 5 and 6 piece bonuses too, but I kinda hate the Psi (and Toxic) hole. I took this before Weaken Resolve, just to have a ranged attack at low levels... but as a practical matter for most (lower level) content, Weaken Resolve is more useful (in my experience)... especially since I can choose to use it and then get all my attacks in afterwards. Unleash Potential is an emergency measure for effectively soft-capping most defenses, and a good home for the Reactive Defenses set. It is available every 3m45s or so. I may revisit this primary/secondary combination with a Brute, mostly because I think leveraging the Brute's ATO pieces and inherently higher HP would be interesting. For both the Brute and Stalker I'd try to incorporate Taunt (or Placate), so there is another twist for me!

Since my comprehension is poor, explain to me how they 'lost the (Homecoming) name' prior to the name purge release.

The story about 'hard times' seems worthy of sympathy, but this situation does not read to me as 100% sincere. For example: if the player was able to login 72 hours after name release, what was stopping them from logging in the day before name release.... And why do they have similar names they are willing to 'trade'? It sounds like the player in question may have so many names that they are more like a burden than anything else.

I have had *one* player hint that they wanted my SG name since the (second) go-live Homecoming day. That happened in the first three months.

I don't understand? Does the message mean that they are playing some sort of name economy, and/or "the one that got away" is the most important of the bunch?

OP can download and Install the halloween pigg pack, and use it while traveling through zones to find pumpkins. 🙂 Or use the elevator.

Heh. I was on two different Blue TF PUGs yesterday, each one had a mix of no fewer than 3 Tanker/Brutes. Taunt was never used, despite a couple of squishies getting flattened. I'll be kind and just guess that each of the Tanker/Brutes thought one of the other two was eventually going to Taunt.

I ended up renaming two characters with names I wanted long ago upon character creation which had previously been "camped". I debated if I really wanted to do the rename(s) and I decided to, basically because I'd already invested time in those characters, originally wanted those names, and One character's original (to me) name was a simple extension of the name I originally wanted but could not get One character's original (to me) name was supposed to be a pun, but since the pun name was not available I had gone with the non-pun version I was thinking about playing up a new character with from scratch for #1, but I wasn't planning any changes I can't do on a second build so *poof rename*. For #2, while I got comments on the character's non-pun name, I'd rather have the pun name! There were two names I wanted from my Live roster that weren't available.

/bind o "target_custom_next enemy alive unseelie$$target_custom_next enemy alive horde$$target_custom_next enemy alive hell" It will find things like hordeling, so it isn't perfect.

I've seen up to three batches of pumpkins in a zone at once: two were defunct, the other was "active".

There will always be seven Unseelie court that spawn with each (Holiday) Monster. Until those seven spawns are defeated, the (Holiday) Giant Monster will not respawn. This is the same type of "gate" that affects the KR Paladin, the Croatoan spawns (Grim Vale and Wandering), and the leftover rubbles from Jurassik. The Unseelie court are all fliers, so they will move a maximum of 200 feet when they decide to flee. It takes less than a minute for them to come back to their pumpkin patch.

For a long time (on Homecoming) I'd add the MVAS to my cadre of Robotic Henchmen. It used to be one of the pets that was visible/selectable in the Pet Window, but that changed at the time of the most recent MM revamps and the proliferation of the mini-pets. My vague memory is that I bought it, and it could have been with just about any currency: Vanguard Merits, Merits, whatever. Is it possible that the recipe doesn't show up in the Vanguard base until you have some minimum number of Vanguard merits? I want to say I went looking for it with some characters that have relatively few Vanguard Merits (under 500) and didn't see it.

(Imma guess it was two scrappers, because I think the stated limit on multiboxing is for three) Tanker+AoE Scrappers doesn't sound radically different to me than the multi-boxing Masterminds in open-world maps chasing Giant Monster rewards. I see several of them (different players!) every day.

I've got one (from before the proliferation of the GM mini-pets) but for the life of me I can't recall how I got it.

The request to "slow down XP" maybe sounds reasonable to some people, but IMO anyone who thinks turning off XP isn't a viable solution is probably not thinking things through. I don't understand why "I want XP, but less of it" is even a thing, since the "AE Inf Nerf" for level 49s... which happened about a million years ago on Homecoming. The initial OP request sounds like it is motivated from some old farming guide from the early days of Homecoming, with an unstated "less XP more Inf, please". Immediately something that comes to my mind: The current way Patrol XP works (especially with exploration badges) would certainly be the next thing that players unwilling to turn off XP to end up clutching the pearls about. As a practical matter, there are only certain levels where XP has to be turned off in order to experience "all the content" at level.

I think I gave up on trying to understand the 'best' place for each of the Scrapper ATO %procs. I've defaulted to this sort of thinking: AFAIK Scrapper's Strike: Recharge/Critical Hit Bonus is a global, so I either Add it to a power that needs recharge (when chasing a 3-slot bonus), like an AoE that will get %damage, or Toss it in any-old power that is going to get a 5-slot bonus In contrast, I find that I typically consider the Critical Strikes set to be harder (intellectually) to break up (for level 50+ builds) because the 2- and 3-slot bonuses are easy to come by from other set choices (most Purple sets offer similar bonuses on the way to getting a 5-piece global Recharge bonus), so essentially by default I end up slotting all 6 of Critical Strikes in the same attack... so my primary concern is not so much about that single +50% Critical Hits %proc, but rather which of the Scrapper attacks doesn't have better slotting options (either for franken-slotting(*1), or for set bonuses) Often, I end up with the Critical Strikes set in one of the first three attack choices (on a build, not necessarily in the primary)... I'll make the call based on what the likelihood of %proc will be, but those powers are all fast recharging and slotting a set like Critical Strikes will end up essentially capping recharge times anyway, so the %proc chance will suffer no matter what I do. (*1) Soooo much depends on what the rest of the build offers. I never start a Scrapper concept planning to fraken-slot (because: high damage, often my Scrappers take relatively few attacks), but if the primary has something odd like low-damage AoE, lots of Damage-over-Time, or offers the chance to reliably stack %-Resistance I'll consider franken-slotting.

I don't think calling certain power sets mechanics "hokey" is wrong, nor do I think they are always bad. Minor digression: if there is an overarching issue I have with the "newer" sets it is that mechanically the powers are "doing too much" for both the server (computing collisions/interactions) and client (graphics-wise, beyond "particle count") that diminishes my appreciation. In particular Storm and Marine are doing a LOT to both sides of the game engine... this can be most easily seen on teams with more than one of each, and should be especially noticeable (even with a solo character) on Tirck-or-Treat door knocks... because enemies may not even be able to spawn from a door! But I digress... As for the "hokey" mechanics, I have three, typically exclusive, approaches: I play them on the ATs where what makes the hokey aspect less evident (or can lean into it appropriately) I compromise on power picks I ignore the mechanic Some examples of (1) for me include preferring Storm on non-Blasters, and to an extent preferring Beam Rifle on non-Blasters (my experience Beam is fine for Blasters, it's just that I find paying attention to Disintegration works better on non-Blasters). An example of (2) is Savage Melee... I skipped Hemorrhage to better accommodate my spend of Blood Frenzy. The revamped Energy Melee could almost fall into this category, but it is more like... An example of (3) for me is Street Justice. The various effects of the attacks (both Builders and Finishers) are "good enough" for my purposes that I make no effort to regularly exploit the combo system. Energy Melee isn't quite here (for me) because I do try to time the use of Energy Focus mechanic. Some sets I find that I basically need to embrace the mechanic. I mentioned the revamped Energy Melee, but Temporal Manipulation is another set where I found I essentially needed Time Wall (now selectable at level 1, so yay!) to get the most out of other power picks.

I have played both Dark (primary) and Plant (secondary) on Blasters, but not together. Dark is a perfectly fine primary, with more Damage-over-Time than other primaries. MY immediate suggestions: Gloom: Defiant Barrage Umbral Torrent: Frankenslot with Acc/Dam, Acc/Range, O-Force Knockdown and 3 %damage procs (possibly a %-Res from Annihilation) Moonbeam: I like the 5x Experienced Marksman set for early-pick Snipes. 5 or 6-slot to taste Tenebrous Tentacles: Annihilation, 6-pieces. Good bonuses and %-Res Life Drain: minimally 3x Touch of the Nictus. I also have 2x Gladiator's Javelin and Cloud Senses %damage in it. Blackstar: I'm not terribly impressed with it, so probably just 5x Armageddon. Plant isn't a bad secondary, but I think it takes some play to figure out how to best use it. After playing with it, my suggestions start at Skewer: 5x Hecatomb. This isn't an attack that will be used very much (after a certain point), so it is for set bonuses. Dark is a lot of "keep away". Toxins: Either 6-slot Gaussian's or 2-slot with the %Buildup and a boosted Recharge IO Spore Cloud is fine with a single Hami-O Wild Fortress: I use 2x Preventive Medicine, the two Resistance +Def global pieces and a boosted Endurance IO Vines: is a good %proc AoE. I use 3x Gladiator's Net, the Superior Entomb %+Absorb/Recharge and 2 more %damage pieces. My personal experience leveling up with Plant Manipulation was that enemies weren't really getting close enough to use Ripper or Thorn Burst. I also am not a fan of single-target Holds/immobilizes, so those powers became skips. The ST Hold can be find for trying to stack control, but generally I find Blasters need more survivability than ST control. Skipping powers that don't offer as much of return allows Blasters to lean into more surviving, getting powers like Rune of Protection, Unrelenting, Unleash Potential, whatever, sooner rather than later.

10) Limit "couple of idea" threads to two ideas per thread.

They aren't a completely outside the 1-20 level range, but the Shivans/Neo-Shivans are close to being the "are they even in the game?" group. It's not so much that I miss them at higher levels, but I thought we'd get some with more radiation/stone attacks at some point.

That was quite a own-goal.

On the other hand... How about porting some of the Energy Blast animations as options for the Sorcery and Force of Will pool's ranged attacks? I don't mind the other aspects of those powers (animation times, etc)... it's more that I find the specific default animations to be a little bit immersion-breaking for some of my characters. Energy Blast is IMO one of the more 'neutral' appearing blast options. Yeah, yeah, I understand these were originally intended to be "origin specific" power pools... but these pools are among the better balanced IMO so it's hard to pass them up... and since the ranged attacks are one of the three "gates" to pick a fourth or fifth power (from the chosen pool) I'll end up with some sort of oddball animation for non-magic or non-psychic characters.