tidge

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.

Enemy critters regenerate. One extreme example where it is possible to witness how an enemy at full health may not yield maximum XP is to defeat one of the Giant Monsters during the Vale Fight, and then let the other one heal up before defeating it. Giant Monsters heal rather quickly, so there shouldn't be much waiting around. I'm relatively certain I've observed that a fully healed second monster yields less XP than expected.

Not a fan of this suggestion, for reasons: 0) The schtick of HEATs are the transformations 1) A human-looking character with only access to the form powers would be a character that seems weirdly ineffective, certainly in terms of DPS. 2) The HEATS need a revisit, possibly on multiple fronts, long before something like this request would make sense to spend time on. We've got some ideas being kicked around in the HEAT subforum.

If I don't specifically call them out (e.g. Acc/Dam), I think of them as "attributes".

For the most part, I think anyone could use a "purpled-out end game build" and use it as a leveling up build, at least in terms of power selections, with some caveats: Replace purples with other sets (Overwhelming Force, PVP) are my choices, or often I just use IOs Replace Superior with non-superiors Pay attention to slots, especially if your leveling build won't get bonuses... so maybe not immediately 6-slot all the attacks in the order you get them? Endurance/Recovery is pretty important while leveling up, before accolades, power slotting, and set bonuses Some faction of the time I take different pool choices while leveling, but that is either because of experimentation or the build has different needs before set bonuses can come into play. Some end-game builds may have a minimal set of attacks and rely upon global +Recharge to make the build work. This is an area where a player has to learn by experience... but if you only see 3 attacks taken before level 25... that is probably not a good leveling up build. There are some posted builds that make IMO poor choices for exemplaring or leveling, such as Hasten before level 16 (at low levels, faster cycling powers are not necessary), or no travel power (less critical because of purchasable powers, but it is something of a Quality-of-Life issue for the player and teammates). I don't think it is reasonable for players to post more than one build to represent multiple choices for levels below 50. Writing for myself: Any non-purple/non-HO pieces in a build I post (i.e. normally crafted Enhancements) are pretty much the same ones I use while leveling up. The only corner case I can think of are those pieces that I boost at level 50 will be attuned variants while leveling.

Enemies that have taken damage from some other source (beyond the player or team that defeats them) yield less than 100% XP for the player/team that defeats them.

Ever since my neighbor killed those squirrels I've been compelled to click on all the computers at the conclusion to the Penny Yin TF. It's a 20 minute long story, but so is the Penny Yin TF. Slightly more on-topic: I thought of one other in-game example that borders on leeching... On event leagues, I feel like I've occasionally been on teams where the teammates weren't doing enough damage to whatever to get rewards (for example, not enough damage to Halloween banners) and also weren't really helping with damaging spawns for XP/drops such that I felt like I was being held back. Some of this could be play choices, but much of it is simply not having AoE attacks. I know that when I run leagues I try to make sure that the teams have a balance of both DPS and levels to smooth out rewards for everyone.

I don't think this is wrong, because level-shifts: I also suspect that there may be a couple of secondary contributing factors. Lackluster control of the henchmen Too much of a focus on trying to support the henchmen The first could be as simple as having the henchmen in the "wrong" stance, but it could also be positioning/picking targets. This varies a bit depending on the chosen primary. The second is more subtle, but I've seen it enough that I think it is common. MMV for others, but when I see a MM focused on trying to keep the henchmen alive, as opposed to supporting the henchmen in what they need to do (defeat enemies), I think that the MM is playing on the wrong side of rewards street. I don't mean that MMs should go out of the way to treat the henchmen as disposable... but in many ways that is exactly what they are. the in-game equivalent of preserving tissue paper is spending effort on the wrong thing, IMO.