[Disparity in proc rate between Scourging Blast / Defender's Bastion]

My hot take: +Endurance is more valuable than either +Absorb or +Heal, with +Absorb better than +Heal.+Absorb isn't in this particular discussion.

[ToT elite bosses awarding 70% more incarnate experience than they should be (newerish title)]

Every time one of my characters seems like it isn't getting XP at what I would consider to be a reasonable clip, I have attributed it to being on a team with low-DPS. This can be both because of AT, low-level characters on the team, as well as rapidly leveled characters that don't have attacks or slots.

 

Anecdote about ToT "farming" in Peregrine Island follows. I want to note that I typically take all of a past year's worth of characters to PI to earn the defeat badges, and this roster of characters will be across the gamut of ATs. I'm quite active, because I want the tip mission and costumes.

 

My most recent character I took to earn the defeat badges was a Controller, with low (relative) damage but with a completely slotted attack chain. I started the ToT festivites with them at level 43. I got to 46, but then hit a wall where there was almost no XP coming in. I noticed my team was all "control" plus one low-level scrapper. I dropped, did a TF and got two more levels. The XP rate changes were not affected by patrol XP or 2XP. Patrol XP is a sneaky thing to pay attention to.

 

When that same character got to 50+, I had some time to kill so went back to the PI Hotel to finish Alpha slotting. Alpha finished quickly, but then there was another wall hit when I was moved to another team. That team leader was either AFK or not paying attention (because team leaders can send invites), and the league leader wasn't active about balancing teams either.

 

In contrast, when I was playing my Blasters, I had what I felt was a more even progression of XP and drops.

[Why a Brute?]

I avoid, and have always avoided, Brutes because I have never enjoyed the Fury mechanic.

 

19 hours ago, Story Archer said:

• I feel like a Brute is best served by being able to go-go-go in order to maintain Fury, so when looking at power sets, I'd like something that will offer me some +Rech and something that will help me manage my Endurance issues, without which the first 30 levels or so seem like a frustrating slog at times. It also seems like you don't necessarily want to prevent foes from attacking you so much as you want to mitigate those attacks when they come.

 

 

I have tried several Brutes because of concept, but Fury keeps getting in the way.

 

I don't think Brutes are in bad place at all, my own "mental model" of why it is easy to see mental anguish about the current (2024, Homecoming) state of Brutes is because for so much of the game it was trivial to argue for the supremacy of Brute over Tankers (in terms of damage, and thus clear times) and the survivability of Brutes over Stalkers/Scrappers (which can lead to a much more laissez faire play style, blah blah blah Fury).

 

"One simply trick" for maintaining Fury was (PB)AoE, so when Tankers got improved AoE (to make them better at Tanking, which was IMO a very smart and effective change (with the effect of speeding up Tanker clear times), it wasn't possible to argue (or gloat in some cases) that Brutes are superior to Tankers. So now the simple argument that "Brute better than Tankers" has become, in the minds of many "Tankers better than Brutes"... which for some folks hurts. Of the vocal critics of "where are Brutes now" it is still (weirdly, IMO) common that an argument is made that "the way to fix Brutes is to nerf Tankers." I find this weird because Brutes were never under-performing by any metric, but Tankers were, by several metrics.

 

As an aside: in the early days of Live (pre-CoV) it was already obvious that Scrappers could out-perform Tankers, especially when it comes to map clear speeds. The difference in survavibility between a Scrapper and a Tanker rarely manifested itself in most content. Once Brutes could be played on the more populated Hero side, it should have been a no-brainer that the popularity of Brutes would eclipse that of Scrappers, for players that wanted faster clear speeds AND fewer face-plants.

 

[Halloween GMs Question]

The Hallowe'en Event Giant Monsters are the 'old school' (original) versions of Jack in Irons and Eochai. This means:

• They don't have all the new mechanics/powers of the 2024 versions
• They don't have all the stats of the 2024 versions
• They have MaxHP based on zone
• They don't drop the rewards of the 2024 versions

I *believe* that the spawn rates favor Eochai (in each zone) because Jack is harder (at low levels). Jack has better resistances, harder-hitting attacks, and spawns level-less critters. I think the Fir Bolg summoned by Eochai are either level-set by zone or below player level (I feel like I have seen them con blue in most zones). The seven members of the Unseelie court are IIRC always even level for the part of the zone they are in.

 

Event Eochai does have a 'pumpkin patch' but it isn't the 2024 version. An interesting side effect of the 'old' Pumpkin Patch is that the knockback from it can 'lock' some MM henchmen into a frozen pose, locked in place and the henchmen become unresponsive to all commands. I haven't observed this with pets. The new/2024 version of Pumpkin Patch has the effect of drawing things back into it, which seems to counter-act this game engine issue.

[Question for the HC folk - Do Giant Monsters cause lag?]

13 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

I don't know any of the people who organize this personally so I can't say for sure.  I will say after last week where it was exceptionally bad, I think you're right in that there's a lot of entitlement surrounding the event.  That's sad because this is a fun event.

 

I do not think it are the league leaders, or the folks that lead teams on the league that have a sense of entitlement. I've played with enough of them (on and off SNS) that the attitude is fun, with a slight variance around how long do we want to play in any given mission (i.e. difficulty) that shifts from time-to-time. The *only* behavior about the league(s) running the Synapse TF themselves that even borders on entitlement IMO is that while the Babbages are being gathered the zone becomes a lag-filled crawl for anyone who happens to be running missions in the zone for a non-SNS reason. 20+ minutes of filling a zone with players and Giant Monsters is somewhat excessive IMO.

 

I feel like I see shades of entitlement from the folks who swarm the zone (with or without their own private Babbages) who I gotta believe are just there for the reward drops. I've seen enough players drop from a Hami league after a triple bloom to know it isn't the challenge plus reward that engages some folks.

[Question for the HC folk - Do Giant Monsters cause lag?]

I'm sorry this happened.

 

30 minutes ago, Excraft said:

Just last week there was a lot of ridiculous and childish bickering in broadcast over someone bringing a Kronos into the Babbage pile.  There were several people on the main league belittling others in broadcast and essentially demanding players in the league put those people on global ignore simply because they're of the opinion that the Kronos isn't the cause of any of the perceived problems.  My own daughter got some extremely offensive and nasty tells from a few of these people because she said said the Kronos is fun and isn't a problem.  That's definitely not cool for people to behave like that, especially since she was on her tank and was helping to corral the Babbages as she usually does.

 

For better or worse, it feels (to me, can't speak for anyone else) that there is an undercurrent of (different types of) entitlement when it comes to Torchbearer's SNS. It was a fun idea, and a neat player-instigated challenge to the game's mechanics to simul-spawn multiple concurrent instances of the Giant Monster. I really got a kick out of playing the event for the first few months, between "it's not a race", "Our challenge settings are WHAT?", "How about we defeat that Boomtown Babbage for the lulz?", etc. For quite some time it's felt more like "give me my merits!" with a LOT of broadcasting about (a wide spectrum of) behaviors.

 

I got a small number of less-than-polite comments for bringing a Babbage to Synapse before the leagues formed and launched! I did this to break up the monotony. I'm sure those players had a rationale for acting upset, but I was like WTF, we're all here to face this thing right? We would occasionally get player-spawned Kronos before the event too, and I thought that was great fun.

 

38 minutes ago, Excraft said:

My daughter was in on the overflow league last week and they were very short on taunters as the main league started exiting.  Lack of sufficient aggro management combined with MM pets close by the gathering area and overzealous players tagging Babbages is what was causing them to wander off. 

 

While there hasn't been a shortage of folks in the Saturday Night Skyway City zone "making mistakes", and I don't doubt that there are possible griefers, I find it easier to believe that there are some fraction of players that simply don't know how the game works on some basic levels. I know that multi-boxers, despite their own self-assessment, don't really pay attention to everything... I used to see the usual multi-box suspects standing by, occasionally with things like damage auras on, or their pets on defense (and triggering more aggro), etc.

 

The aggro management is tricky, because even Tankers with Taunt only have an aggro cap of 5 targets. I'd want to believe that a small handful of Tankers could keep all the Babbages taunted but as a practical matter I don't know that once there are more than 12 that at least one of them isn't going to actually be taunted. My Tankers have a 6-slotted Taunt, and when one decides to break off, it hasn't been trivial in the past to get its attention.

[Yellow Salvage, what's up with that?]

2 minutes ago, Andreah said:

I could see myself doing this easily. If I need two yellow salvage to craft a purple, paying 100k each for them is a round off error compared to the value of a purple.

 

For two, sure. This was about Nx100 bids tho.

[Thoughts on Fold Space Etiquette on Leagues and Teams]

12 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

For folks who dislike fold space:

 

What about a Tanker using it? 

 

Sorry for the edit:

Let's keep it basic.  Only Tanker on the team. 

 

My take: I like the only Tanker on the team to be paying enough attention to the area to be controlling the aggro and switching targets. The Tanker is going to need tools/strategy to deal with any enemies that aren't moved by Fold Space.

[Build Request Mind / Time / Sorcery / Psionic Mastery Controller]

How did this effort turn out? If I were to use those pools, I feel like I'd probably lean into the Sorcery pool hard, making sacrifices from the primary (Mind Control).

 

For this character, I'd definitely take Arcane Bolt (with 5xArmageddon), Mystic Flight (probably 2x or 3x Blessing of the Zephyr), and Rune of Protection (2x Resistance mules). The other two powers are useful, but I'd de-prioritize them.

 

For the Mind Control primary, I'd want the higher tier picks (T6 thru T9) and the earlier ones to taste.

 

The Time Manipulation Secondary is where the fun is. You definitely want Time Crawl, but it only needs a single slot with something like a H-O Endoplasm. If you want to try to leverage it for damage (since you should be using it on all your targets) 2x Pacing of the Turtle (Accuracy/Endurance, Accuracy/Slow) and 2x %Damage works for me.

 

Temporal Mending is a good power for Healing sets (I use 6x Preventive Medicine). Time's Juncture only needs a couple of slots, look at 2x H-O Enzyme. I slotted Distortion Field with a boosted Endurance/Recharge/Slow piece and a Superior Entomb (Recharge/%Absorb). Time Stop is used (by me) as a proc-bomb, 3x Gladiator's Net (boosting Accuracy pieces) and 2 or 3 more %damage. RNG works against more than 3 %proc hitting, but this is an AoE so 4 seems reasonable to me. Slowed Response is another power that can have a couple of %proc, if so I recommend 2x (boosted) Analyze Weakness to include Accuracy slotting.

 

I have Farsight franken-slotted: LotG Def/Recharge, 2x Hami-O Membrane, 2x Gaussian's (ToHit/Endurance, Recharge/Endurance).

 

I have Chrono Shift slotted with boosted 50+5 pieces: 2x Panacea (Endurance/Recharge, Heal/Recharge) and a boosted Endurance/Recharge (I used Doctored Wounds). I looked at different combinations, this is what I settled on.

 

I skipped Temporal Selection. This is a good power for allies, but I find it hard to predict which ally will really benefit from it, because of choices those players make, and how close to 'caps' they are. The AoE controls/buffs/debuffs are more reliable in my experience.

 

I'm not a huge fan of Psionic Mastery, I would probably only take Indomitable Will and Mind Over Body. I really dislike World of Confusion, it will barely make a difference if you 6-slot the Coercive Persuasion set in the AoE Confuse, and not at all if you also take the single-target Confuse for stacking. Some folks swear by those sorts of toggles, but between the necessary ToHit checks, small AoE and need for slots I find WoC to be too costly (in terms of slots) and it requires other layers of powers to make work. Mental Blast and Psionic Tornado can be fine, but a word of caution: Those attacks will only be available at higher levels, and at high levels there are a lot of enemies that highly resist Psi damage. I'd consider them only if I wanted them for theme, or for specific set bonuses.

 

 

[Thoughts on Gale, yes Gale.]

Circling back: I ended up slotting Gale with 2x Accuracy IO at 50+5, and two %proc pieces. I alternate between 2x %Damage or  %Damage + %-Resistance, I swap into the %-Resistance for my AoE when on teams.

 

Storm/Storm offers multiple AoE powers that can accept the %-Resistance from Annihilation and/or Achilles' Heel, so when teaming I like having those in multiple powers to extend the time of applied -Resistance as a force multiplier.

[Yellow Salvage, what's up with that?]

It happened again in the last 12 hours. Again, I had enough "non-market" characters with stacks of yellow stock-piled to take advantage of/reset the AH prices.

 

I find it odd that there are only a few hundred bids for yellow salvage at exorbitant prices, as opposed to the past (tens of?) thousands... the latter seems like a peculiar market manipulation attempt (probably working off of old mental models about the market from Live) whereas the former looks more like a sort of "buy it now" strategy. I just can't imagine why someone would want to 'buy it now' for several hundred yellows at such prices.

[Tip mishs]

This is a well-known, and commonly experienced issue. Other places where this is observed include rescuing PPD hostages in Safeguard missions.

 

There is a fun sort of flip-side: If a Kheldian player spawns a tip mission where all the enemies originally con as friendly, such as "eliminate the guest speaker" level 20-29 alignment mission, the extra quantum spawns will spawn as hostile, and the nearby "friendly" mobiles will attack and defeat them!

[Yellow Salvage, what's up with that?]

Posting here to note that there was a brief period in the last 48 hours where there were a significant number of 20Kinf+ bids on yellow salvage. A few of my characters that had stockpiled yellow stacks were able to re-orient things.

[Thoughts on Fold Space Etiquette on Leagues and Teams]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I think the moral of this story is that Fold Space is right if you do it, wrong if they do it.  Unless you're Tidge, then everyone who took Fold Space made a mistake!

 

😁

 

You betcha! I don't want to dismiss that folks who took Fold Space might be having fun... I had more than one character that took Long Range Teleport, so the revamp to the Teleportation pool was initially very appealing... but as accused, after working with it I now see Fold Space as a mistake!

 

[Question for the HC folk - Do Giant Monsters cause lag?]

I don't think any particular Giant Monster is causing lag.

 

For the Torchbearer SNS events, I am convinced it is the players and the large number of power effects that need to be resolved (as well as video effects, ehem Storm). A Kronos Titan's Swarm Missles might contribute more particles than certain other GM attacks, but I don't think that is the issue.

 

I have felt the same sort of lag I've seen from SNS, but not as severe, from Torchbearer's PI Halloween hotel. Simply being in the zone can be a struggle. I used to think it was perception range, but I was getting some click/door/click/attack issues on the far end of the main island.

[Thoughts on Fold Space Etiquette on Leagues and Teams]

Fold Space may be a fun choice for some players, but I don't think it is a good strategic choice... in addition to not being fun for players that rely on certain powers. For example, location based AoE damage/debuffs, or melee attacks.

 

I want to "Yes, and" (part of) this post:

 

4 hours ago, ZacKing said:

 

I agree with most of what you said here with the exception of the highlighted part.  I honestly don't see the need to have everyone stand around having stuff teleported to them to nuke it.  I personally don't think that's fun at all, but if you do then more power to you.  Play how you like.  Just seems like a very lazy way to play where people can't even be arsed to press some keys to move around.

 

The weakest part of the "Fold Space make me a better melee, because I bring the mobiles to me!" is that Combat Teleport is a prerequisite for Fold Space, and Combat Teleport has a much faster recharge time than Fold Space, and is not subject to the RNG for a ToHit check. I explained above why I don't think Fold Space is a good choice for Tankers, so I'm trying to imagine another (non-HEAT) that wants to leverage Fold Space because of PBAoE. In all the cases I can think of (in this non-rooted armor set era) it would be better for the individual to just move and/or retarget, and it would be better for a team to organically adapt their attacks without waiting for the quasi-random use of Fold Space by one or more teammates.

 

Without invoking Hasten (a choice I would question if paired with Fold Space, among other things: because four other powers were skipped to get that combo) the recharge time on Fold Space for a level 50 is going to have a floor of something like 40 seconds? I basically want to know why the character with Fold Space is taking longer than the recharge time to defeat whatever enemies were going to be "herded" via Fold Space, and wasn't there a better strategic use of power choices and slotting to get to an end result of enemies on the floor in a shorter amount of time?

 

4 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

     This entire time you'd already convinced yourself that wherever you move and fight is right, and wherever anyone else moves and fights is wrong.  Whether they use Fold Space or not, you've already demonized your teammates in your mind because you keep using derogatory words like "very lazy".  They were never going to be able to please you, regardless of what they did.  I recommend solo play.

 

When I see a teammate is using Fold Space, it is rare that I see them using it in a completely predictable manner. I try to figure out what their minimum recharge time is, but Fold Space never appears to be on auto. The effect it has on me (as a teammate) is that I have to pace what I am doing to accommodate the random firing of Fold Space... and often it is slowing me down because my power cadence has to account for enemies vanishing. I guess that is selfish on my part, but I don't think I'm the only selfish player in that circumstance.

[Adding more D-SYNC Enhancements to the game.]

I'm befuddled why a certain font-challenged individual thinks a Purple or PVP Fear Enhancement set would be a sign of "power creep"; AFAIK there are already existing Hami-O and D-Syncs that can boost existing Fear powers with single-piece enhancement values (Control, Accuracy, Range, Endurance, Recharge) higher than equivalent level 50 pieces' values.

[Gravity/Marine ??]

On 10/9/2024 at 11:41 AM, Maelwys said:

However whenever Brine wears off it seems it also *restores* that HP again instantly (the only attack I'm aware of that kinda-sorta does that is Spectral Wounds). So as it stands you could begin a fight with a GM, use Brine (taking ~500 HP off its current bar) then gradually whittle the GM down with regular attacks; and then whenever that stack of Brine eventually wears off it will instantly gain 500 HP back again. And as you gradually whittle its overall HP down subsequent casting of Brine will do less and less "damage" to it.

 

One big advantage to -MaxHP is that it affects the net amount of HP that is Regenerated while the debuff is in place.

[Adding more D-SYNC Enhancements to the game.]

18 hours ago, Riverdusk said:

Speaking of healing sets, I think it'd be cool if they added a purple healing set.

 

Accurate Healing perhaps. The oddball things about Accurate Healing choices IMO is that the only level ranges covered are 10-30 and 30-50... in other words: the first set's enhancement bonuses cap out at 30 (+5, if boosted) and the second one offers no set bonuses below 25 (if attuned). There is no shortage of good Healing sets, including a pretty good PVP version.

 

The real deficit IMO is the lack of both Purple and PVP sets for Threat and Fear. The powers that take those sorts of enhancements often can "get by" with only a few slots, which would make them good candidates for boosting and/or franken-slotting. There is also a weird deficit of Accuracy and Endurance Reduction options (in Threat). Fear has some better options (including a couple of Accuracy/Endurance choices), but what Fear lacks IMO is a %proc that can make a single-target Fear useful at higher levels/spawn sizes like the %Contagious Confusion proc can for Confuse powers. Even another %damage piece wouldn't be an outrageous request. In comparison, Holds have no shortage of crazy good %procs of all sort: higher magnitude, Absrob, Damage, blah blah blah fishcakes.

 

 

[Force Feedback Proc]

It almost certainly will do nothing for the MM, because it would do nothing on cast.

 

Even if the FF +Recharge worked for the henchmen (robots is probably) attacks, the henchmen typically have a perfectly good pace of attacks (once upgraded), so it wouldn't be needed.

[Adding more D-SYNC Enhancements to the game.]

10 minutes ago, Ukase said:

This is an interesting thought. There may be some pitfalls that I can't think of, but it's super interesting wondering how a given player would design their own specific enhancement. 

 

Looking at those Accuracy/Recharge/Recharge options right now...

[Adding more D-SYNC Enhancements to the game.]

14 hours ago, Jiro Ito said:

would definitely love some kind of a taunt/end for tank toggles

 

Frankly, we could use a couple of new threat sets. I'd like Accuracy/Endurance Reduction and Accuracy/Threat pieces as well... because not every Threat Power is an AutoHit.

[Giant Monsters]

The event GMs give Merits, Badges, XP and Inf. There are enough reasons to fight them already.

[Giant Monsters]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

I wasn't referring to the comparison of Croatoa Eochai and Jack vs Event Eochai and Jack; I was comparing the zone DE GMs to the Event GMs. They have the same hitpoints and while they differ in their attacks, my characters haven't experienced any difference in combat difficulty between the two. 

 

For the ones that offer Monstrous Aethers, players have to wait between spawns. Obviously when players can spawn such GMs in rapid succession, this stretches the reward profile.

[Giant Monsters]

13 hours ago, Ukase said:

It's not farming I'm after. I merely pose the question when I realized that the effort to tackle a named GM is the same effort to tackle an un-named GM. It just seems to me the rewards should be the same for both, because it's essentially the same risk.

 

It is not the same risk. The event GMs are the old-school versions of Jack and Eochai; they are not nearly as difficult as the Croatoan ones available the rest of the year.