tidge

The vector of my dislike for this change to alignment tips is the same (as above), but the magnitude of the personal animosity is less. Please roll back this unnecessary change that is also highly annoying.

I'm glad MIDs (whatever version) works for some folks. I gave up on it years ago because (at the time) it was such a resource hog and it felt like it was requiring too much of my PC to do what (I think) should have been a rather straightforward database implementation. I am 100% aware of the complexities inherent to the various character building options in CoX, but as a software designer it felt to me like the focus was more on the bajillion corner cases and less on refactoring the database implementation to run in a more 'minimalistic' way. I haven't seen the code, so this is purely my feels as a consumer. Similarly: I am guessing the UI is designed with whatever the team feels they understand the best, likely because it "works". That doesn't mean that the UI code implementation is the best for all consumers. Kudos to the folks working on it. These days I construct my builds in Excel (of all things!) while referencing City of Data and my Enhancement cheat-sheet. I typically try to approach builds by having no more than three primary design intents (depending on AT and mood) after those I find I can tweak the higher-order effects without needing a MIDS... but I usually only do THAT after some time running the characters. Personally: Ever since Homecoming lowered the level requirements for powers, I have found designing character builds to be easier. Partially because there is less of a need to put 'filler' power choices early-ish in a build, and partially because with higher-tier powers available sooner I like being able to slot those early. At level 50 it makes little difference but I like having more play time with a power as I level.

I haven't taken a Placate-ish power since before the previous rounds of changes (to the power, to the set options). I am now leveling up a Stalker with Placate and I like it! With one slot? I'd probably just go Recharge. I want it available as often as possible. It looks like the stalker version doesn't take Accuracy, so usually this means it is an 'auto-hit' but I haven't done testing to see if it ever misses.... my character is too low level and doesn't have it slotted yet. My current Stalker has a 5-piece slotting of Mocking Beratement planned (not using the pure Threat piece). I don't have the slots for the 6th piece bonus (from that set) and the effects of the extra global recharge would be somewhat minimal for this build. If it turns out that I don't "need" that set's extra Defensive boosts, I'll pull slots from Placate. I like the +MaxEnd from Mocking Beratement, so I'd probably keep 2 slots in the power.

Writing only for myself: I check the Initial Beta release notes, and then I will follow some fraction of the subsequent updates for those that interest me. I full admit to NOT reading the official page 7 release notes because... well... WALL OF TEXT. I do eventually circle back to them, but I have to admit I never expected a change to the TIP system... especially in an area that I don't recall anyone asking for. Specific to alignment TIPs, the only ask I ever recall players asking for was the ability to pull TIPs from previous level ranges. So bad on me for putting it in the BUG forum without checking the actual release notes. Mea culpa. EDIT: I want to add this bit of my annoyance of this change: I don't know what problem/issue this change addresses. We always had the ability to pick any alignment tip mission we wanted using a SG base device, for the cost of a single merit. If we needed 'room' for the mission, it was trivial to dismiss another alignment mission.

I agree: Invulnerability (on Homecoming) doesn't have to worry so much about Psi damage, with a caveat. When Psi enemies appear, the biggest issue with them IMO is that there are several groups that are not easily gathered (because they have mostly/exclusively long ranged attacks) and so Invincibility is less likely to be boosting a Tanker's Defenses (when a non-ranged dogpile is defeated). IMO knowing that there are groups that don't "swarm" a Tanker (IDF, Seers, Rularuu for example) is my favorite reason to leverage slotting choices that most Invulnerable Tankers will do anyway, like picking/slotting Positional defense boosts (Weave, Maneuvers, Combat Jumping) Scaling Damage Resistance +Heal/%Absorb ...And of course there are individual pieces that can layer on extra resistances, as well as set bonuses. I do typically add a little bit more Psi Resistance to Invulnerables but only after planning to hit (some/all) of the bullet points above.

I tested with a non-50 defeating (nu)Adamastor the first time: 10 Merits + 6 Merits (no threads, obviously) EDIT: I went back and tested with a level 50, and got 10 Merits, plus 6 Merits plus 5 Threads (plus Monstrous Aethers) . This is a pretty generous drop IMO.

IIRC Auto powers act as if they are being triggered every so many seconds... 10? Those reactivations replace the previous application (with same duration), which is why they will be 'perma' in an auto power. Some enhancements have Global effects that work like an enhancement set bonus that does not need to be triggered.

I decided to try nuLusca with my monster hunter. I did get 22 merits (plus 1 pet recipe, + 2 monster Aether's) but it took me 30+ minutes. I didn't think this was a good use of my (solo) time. Those aren't terrible rewards for time spent, but I could have spent the same time in a less stressful set of SSA1 runs ... Likely 5 of them... In the same amount of time.

50s would get 10 merits + 5 threads IIRC, maybe that is what you saw?

As @Infinitum wrote above: it is really hard to go wrong with most any Tanker. I have also watched Tanks drop in Health and then the Regeneration plus Scaling Resistance cuts in and then the Tank's Health is idling at some value. There are corner cases of content that can cause grief.... Like -MaxHP attacks. The 'tankiest' Tank will have to plan for all the corner cases too.

First time in the 24 hour period was 10 merits (and still is). Subsequent defeats in the same 24 hour (more like 18 IIRC) were 6 merits. As others have written: waiting for the timer to reset for 6 merits is not an efficient way to earn merits.

I'll repeat: Many melee characters have Taunt as part of an aura, and those auras rarely get detoggled. Generally it is a good idea for a Tanker/Brute to get in the habit of casting actual Taunt powers as well, for a variety of reasons. There is no reason to be upset and suggest micro-managing of Tanks/Brutes playstyles, especially when the problem as described here (confused players targeting leaguemates) isn't unique to Tankers/Brutes.

You also don't need to be durable or high-level to run SSA1, and it can be infinitely re-run for 5 merits. Once you know what to do, it should take under 7 minutes for a vast majority of characters.

Hoo boy. I find this to be a pretty clumsy implementation.

I can't tell if it is event related or alignment, I suspect the latter. My level 50 is constantly getting Tip notifications. I have 3 valentines and 5 alignment missions.

With ONLY (non set) IOs, being "well rounded" will probably involve specific power choices to mitigate debuffs, improve Accuracy/ToHit, and self heal. With sets, it is reasonably straightforward to mitigate those sorts of concerns via slotting on just about any tanker. In general terms... At 54x8 settings, plan to be hit and make sure you can hit back.

Part of my motivation for a recent new character was explicitly to use up many many horded enhancement sets. I can remember my initial thinking on WHY I hoarded THOSE, but I hadn't rolled up a character that needed so many in a very long time. That new level 10 is now Ninja Running around Paragon City with pockets full of enhancements it won't be able to use for a long time.

Don't forget the players who have Taunt components to their auras. It is somewhat important for players to monitor their own status so the can physically move away if the fall victim to the Confuse.

I haven't been on a Minds of Mayhem in a while, but it is the AoE Mezz that causes grief. When I see myself Taunted, or the League taking a lot more AOE damage, often that is the sign one or more players have gotten confused.

I also agree that Heather Townshends arc is the best. I believe one of the reward options is a second Empyrean Merit. Those missions can be used as a sort of farm as well. From memory, turning up the spawn sizes to x8 and running that arc twice is just about the right amount of spawns to get a Purple or PVP recipe (assuming all mobiles are cleared). When I was doing this regularly, a blitz run takes about 11 minutes while a full sweep (with an AoE DPS character) took a little over 30 minutes to clear.

I would say that that Dull Pain is one of the least important powers to have perma. I have put it on auto, but only for very limited circumstances (hard modes). YMMV. I usually see Defensive clicks as being more important to perma... Although if those powers affect teammates (e.g. Mind Link) it could be important to not have them on auto because teams may be too scattered to get the boosts. Obligatory reminder that a temporary global +Recharge buff can be crafted at a SG base workstation.

For a newish player, I think my recommendation would be Invulnerability.... mostly because of the early access to Dull Pain. It is also crazy easy to build a strong defensive build with just a as few as one extra slot in the primary powers and IOs. (Endurance Reduction, plus one for the Def/Res attribute) Personally, I find the low level Tanker powers to be mostly unnecessary for most of the content... this includes Dull Pain... but if a player is trying to get an old-school feel for playing, just having the self heal/+HP available as a "click" (it won't recharge very quickly without slotting and bonuses) is probably the sort of assurance that a newish player should have available as they observe how damage gets directed at them. I have nothing against the SR recommendation, except that I think this is one of those sets that needs more thinking about slotting and would be slightly harder than some other armors while leveling and/or lacking slots. This is just me: but of Defense-based builds I find myself constantly monitoring the defense values (mostly positional, depends on character)... and it will be hard to get to the "soft-cap" without access to globals and set bonuses.

+1! For me it is less about getting upset and more about smirking about logical disconnects among players who say they want one thing but then fall on "No, not like that!" I often ignore PUGs advertised as "Kill Most" because I've played on sooo many of them where the team leader freaks out because we are engaging spawns "that we don't need to fight". I'd say less than a quarter of these sorts of advertised groups even come close to "kill most". I am not a mind reader, so how am I supposed to know that the leader doesn't want to fight as many of the Freaks/Council in the Penny Yin TF, or sweep through Crey on Manticore, or pull as many ITF Cimerorans/Council as possible?

This is my experience with Dominators: With Domination up they can usually pop into a large spawn and fire off enough controls (hard and soft) that they don't face any meaningful retaliation... and with perma-Domination, this sort of mad cycling happens really fast... but a few things happen to Dominators that don't quite happen to Blasters: A Dominator that gets slowed, or allows perma-Dom to slip gets clobbered fast Endurance burns faster with uber Recharge, so Dominators have to make sure they don't exhaust the blue bar before the Domination refill When a Dominator misses controlling certain boss-level enemies with mezzes, watch out! This is a little different than with Blasters... yes Blasters can be hit with an enemy Mezzes and debuffs, but generally I find it easier to buff Blaster defenses AND have a couple of AoEs to wipe out spawns... so a Blaster that misses a nasty boss/LT has probably wiped the rest of the spawn (or set them up to be wiped with another AoE)... My Dominators don't tend to try to sweep out a spawn until after the first round of controls was applied. Scrappers typically don't get ALL the aggro from a spawn like Dominators, Controllers or Blasters... and Scrappers have their secondaries. When Scrappers fail, usually they are just getting whittled down in a dogpile. My Dominators constantly feel like they are on playing on the edge of a knife... I can play my Blasters in a kamikaze way but usually for me a full-kit Blaster gets into trouble when messing up an attack chain... Dominators fail in a wonderful variety of ways.

I can totally get behind this. Writing only for myself, about myself: 1) I used to always reach for Hasten, and then I tried NOT using it, and I found very little actual difference in when powers were available for use... and when I wanted to use them. If the character has a 90 second heavy-hitting power... Hasten might (on my typical builds) have it ready as much as a couple seconds sooner. Mileage varies, but those 2 seconds could be used for something like chatting with teammates (or whatever). I found that once I was relying on Hasten, I'd then start down the path of chasing Slow resistance and/or perma-Hasten, neither of which are really teaching me what I can do with my primary/secondary powers! I am not anti-Hasten! Every once in a while I find a build with a much longer (5 min+) recharge timer on a power I want, and Hasten helps for sure. I try to delay the choice of Hasten until just before I pick up such powers. 2) I use leveling up to challenge my own notions of how powers "should" work... sometimes I am disappointed, sometimes I am surprised. Sometimes I keep powers by change my slotting instincts. One type of power that I sometimes find great and other times disappointing are Stuns. I never know until I play with them which category they will fall into! One power that I struggle to make work is the Poison Controller's Venomous Gas. On paper, it looks to be good... but as near as I can tell it requires some very specific build/play choices that I have not mastered... I'm on my second Poison Controller just to try to unlock its secrets! My first character that tried it gave it up and never looked back, but I want to see if I can make it work... and for that I feel I need play time with it across all levels. One character that was a nightmare to level was a War Mace Scrapper. With level 50 slotting, it plays perfectly fine across all content.... but if I had stopped using it before 50, I would have a completely different opinion of that set. If I had PLed it to 50, I would have a much narrower opinion of how to make that set work during play... I might even recommend Hasten for it while leveling!