tidge

Do you offer any evidence that people aren't already playing the way you would prefer, or evidence that people aren't already building bases like you want? If not, this has the "solution in search of a problem" feel to it. EDIT: I can go ahead and report that at least one redside group exists, with their own custom base on Torchbearer, that regularly runs content as a team. As near as I can tell we are doing it for the comradery and the love of the game.

Ah, the old "I don't want to deny other players anything, I just want more rewards for players that might already be playing the way I prefer they play" argument.

I don't understand. This request seems to be "can I have some feelz pleez?" There are plenty of badges that invite team play, if that is what you really want. Whatever this request really is, restricting base building is not a cool approach, any more than it would be to restrict costume options.

Setting aside the "Dark" of it all... Generally it is a good idea to help out the henchmen with defenses (first) and resistances (second). Aside from the various global unique enhancements that buff these when they are close to the Mastermind, it is rare that slotting the henchmen themselves for defense/resistance IOs (not counting those globals) is that valuable. /Dark has historically been a strong MM secondary because it offers two things, plus a third thing (in the era of enhancement sets) It offers PBAoE Healing, Defenses, and Resistances to support the henches It offers debuffs and controls to make the henches job easier. Dark Fluffy The Dark Servant should be able to take some of those global enhancement pieces... If it made sense you could probably just slot the Servant with an Accuracy IO and use the rest of the slots for mules. My own recommendations for the secondary lean to this (I have played lots of Dark, but not as a MM since live): T1 Tar Patch <- take it, 2xRecharge and use it all the time. T2 Twilight Grasp <- This is the heal for the henches T3 Darkest Night <- Eventually you want it, but it can be delayed. It needs no slots T4 Howling Twilight <- I love spamming this, but on MMs I'd probably skip it. T5 Shadow Fall <- A must take. This is your best power for protecting the henches. T6 Fearsome Stare <- A more reliable control attack than Howling Twilight T7 Petrifying Gaze <- I'm not a fan of late choice single-target Holds. If you take this, slot it for Accuracy, Recharge and Hold. Don't fool yourself into thinking of it as a source of %proc damage for a MM. T8 Black Hole <- I'd skip this T9 Dark Servant <- take it. It's good to have a pet (not a henchman) that will also try to spam heals. I'd recommend leveraging the Leadership pool as well.

I am very casual these days and only noticed a couple of things: The uncommon salvage market has overcome the pricing silliness. Thanks farmers! It took longer than I expected to sell some of my wares. I am guessing that it took some time for new players to get comfortable with slotting their characters.

I plead guilty to grabbing aggro from some other spawn, especially if the PUG has been advertised as a "Kill Most". Occasionally I get $#!+ about it, but I only do it if I know both I and the team can handle it. I will also branch off of large map mission where the objective is to "defeat all", again: if we can handle splitting the party. By "handling" I mean both being able to clear spawns quickly and survive spawns. I see little point in running off solo if the encountered mobs (by 'solo' or a 'pack' of players) aren't being defeated. Scattering mobiles can be a real time waster. I grok that sometimes people aren't in the mood for this, and I make an effort to pay attention to PUGmates to see if they are exemplared down, have a lotta slots, etc. so as to not have them be overwhelmed. But FFS, a team of 8 level 50s on a Penny Yin can handle an extra spawn or two (or more). I've never seen anyone run a Penny Yin with any actual limits on players, besides time and number of defeats. I've seen PY 'speed' runs that involved destroying doors in the police station, and 'kill most' that involved skipping all the Freaks on the way to Clamor! Speeding to the end objective is a different beast. I'll only do this if the team lead has said that this is the way, and I am playing a character that can actually get to the end objective without aggroing the entire map. Otherwise I am perfectly happy to hang back and defeat spawns. When I lead PUG, I always announce I don't mind speed if that is anyone's jam. The Manticore TF for example has a few missions in which I think the whole team would have to be in a very particular head-space to want to clear all those maps.

Let's agree to disagree on any potential value of changing this implementation.

I don't dedicate that much SG storage to Enhancements; it's four tables (1 for PVP/Superior, 1 for Superior/HO/DSync, 2 for commonly used sets) so what I do when a table has gotten "too full" and I don't have an alt that will eventually use any of the pieces is to have one of the finished alts hold the enhancements of a certain type. I don't typically stockpile Winter or ATO pieces because those will get purchased/crafted as needed (and they never "drop"). For example: I'm a fan of the Reactive Defenses and Unbreakable Constraint sets for just about every AT, so I try to keep those pieces available. When teh storage is tight, I have one of my "tanky" types pick those pieces up to free up space for things I will craft to pass on, such as ATO or Winter pieces. Extra "Healing" set pieces will end up with one of the more healing-oriented characters, etc. I also do this with Hami-O and Dsyncs, but I often forget who is holding those! I personally tend towards being a pack rat with certain %damage pieces, as well as pieces from non-PVP, rare sets that don't tend to drop as much (often because they only exist at lower levels). I can afford them on the market, but I take a peculiar amount of satisfaction in being able to kit a character from the stockpile.

With the Endurance costs for MM powers? No thank you! I think I understand the point, but except for the delay in being able to immediately apply the upgrades I am completely satisfied with the henchmen keeping their powers as I zone, pass through doors, or send them across the map to dispatch with something. To clarify: I try to take Leadership toggles to assist my henchmen, plus toggles for the MM to reduce incoming damage (via Defenses and/or Resistances) so I don't want to think about having two more toggles!

I think it is a shame that we can't "Ouro" to lower level tip missions! The writing in them is quite good, and there are a bunch of "mini arcs" that explain some of the game's side lore.

IIRC, @lemming has it right. I don't believe it is possible to buy a lower level TIP if you have leveled beyond its decade. E.g. Level 50 characters can only buy "level 40" tips in the SG base.

I'm enjoying the increased population (Torchbearer), with a small number of bête noire. Because they are so trivial, I shall list them! I'm witnessing a lot of patter (sometimes "bossy", sometimes less so) that reminds me a little too much of less enlightened times. For example: I'm occasionally seeing LFG calls and in-team chat for specific ATs. There is very little content that requires anything that even looks like a "balanced" team. I used to just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but with the upcoming rewards for "balanced" teams, I kinda feel like the game will soon be explicitly rewarding a type of behavior that tends to be exclusionary. It's been a PITA in zones like Kings Row and Croatoa to find "loose" spawns that were left undefeated by some other Giant Monster Hunter. When the GMs get buffed, I feel that the problem of people not cleaning up after their meals is only going to get worse... it does take a little extra time to make sure events are reset, yet it so rarely happens now,.. I want to believe it is some new player ignorance, but it happened before the big influx too. I worry that after an even longer struggle with a GM that fewer players will look around to make sure the event is ready for the next batch of players.

Here are my rough estimates of inherent (i.e. no Recharge slotting) %proc chances for the Dark/Dark powers, based on a 3.5 PPM %proc. Darkness Control (primary) T1 Dark Grasp: 70% T2 Shadowy Binds: 38% T3 Living Shadows: 25% T4 Posses: 75% T5 Fearsome Stare: 90% (ceiling) T6 Heart of Darkness; 90% (ceiling) T8 Shadow Field is a pseudopet, so I'm passing... like some pseudopets, it appears to have a decent chance to trigger a %proc on cast, but generally I find these to be unreliable for %damage. Darkness Affinity (secondary) T1 Tar Patch: another pseudo pet. The real advantage of Tar Patch is the -resistance, so I pretty much only slot for Recharge. T2 Twilight Grasp: 75% T3 Darkest Night: this is a toggle, don't bother with %proc T4 Howling Twilight: 90% (ceiling) T7 Soul Absorption: 90% (ceiling) In my own build, the "weakest" power is Living Shadows. It is a bit of an inherent Endurance hog, and its fast recharge times sink the %damage chances. I have 3 slots in it dedicated to %damage (one of them is a PVP, so higher base damage than non-PVP/non-Purple) and I still feel like those slots are wasted... even when facing x8 spawns. A reminder of my current slotting: Level 2: Living Shadows (A) Trap of the Hunter - Accuracy/Endurance (*) Superior Frozen Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (*) Javelin Volley - Chance of Damage (Lethal) (*) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage (Energy) (*) Trap of the Hunter - Chance of Damage (Lethal) The main reason I keep Living Shadows in my build is for the -Knockback to all targets, as a lot of the powers I use on this character are location based. Immobilizing enemies is a nice side effect, sometimes it matters often it does not. The one change I might make to this slotting is to replace the Trap of the Hunter Accuracy/Endurance piece with a D-Sync Guidance (Accuracy/Range). I'd lose the enhancement set bonus for Immobilization, but the inherent Immob time is already pretty long. The Endurance cost per cast would go up by almost 2, but adding range to the cone is a pretty useful swap in my experience.

This is my level 50 build (I think, I am often tweaking) Some comments on my thinking... Powers and Slots are front-loaded... and there is little reliance on powers above level 35. I like to have characters that scale across all levels of play, which means having powers to cast with (if possible) no gaps in "attacks" at any level... and I like to have the obvious "signature" AT powers available in as much content as possible. The build doesn't include Hasten. I have a general allergy to including Hasten, since enhancement sets can add quite a bit of Global Recharge without it. It is not lost on my that many of the Dark/Dark/Soul Controller's "signature moves" have such inherently long cast times that Hasten is practically a no-brainer. Consider this build an attempt to do a lot without that sort of brain! The set bonuses that appear are my preference, and I don't expect that the choices made will appeal to everyone. I'm generally looking for Global recharge, Accuracy and Endurance management (Discounts, MaxEnd, Recovery) when possible. Chasing %damage was a choice. I like to solo oddball content, so almost every power tries to leverage %damage... the inherently fast recharge powers is where I tried to use "more effective" %damage (higher PPM and/or higher base damage). %damage in pets is not always a good choice, but the ones I made seem to be paying off. My choices to have powers that do damage to have a more effective solo build have come at a cost: This character has sacrificed control (durations) for damage... and the placement of slots have made some of the more team-friendly powers less effective to different degrees (Twilight Grasp, Soul Absorption, Shadow Fall, Fade). The Pet slotting is intended to help cover that gap. I probably should invest in a second build that is more "team friendly", when personal damage is less important. When I figure that out, I will post it. My immediate thoughts:

I played a Dark/Dark Controller to 50+, so I thought I'd circle back. The build will be posted when I have a chance to format it as text. I don't have 'perma' Haunts in my build; there is something like a 12 sec downtime. I slotted the Haunts with: Expedient Reinforcement: Accuracy/Recharge Expedient Reinforcement: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge Expedient Reinforcement: Endurance/Damage/Recharge Expedient Reinforcement: Accuracy/Damage Soulbound Allegiance: Accuracy/Recharge (50+5) Soulbound Allegiance: %BuildUp They do reliably get the %BuildUp. I didn't think it was worth trying to add a %damage power to them. My build will have the Umbra Beast, Dark Servant and Haunt out at most times... but I haven't yet bothered with trying to improve the pet defenses/resistances. Partially this is because I do have Hami-Os and %damage in the Beast and Servant (to improve what they already do), partially this is because of the typical AI positioning of the pets and my PBAoE team powers. I don't usually solo +4 with this character, so I haven't been motivated to improve the defenses/resistances. If I was so motivated, I might consider using Haunt as the mule power for those pieces, but I find with the above slotting I get a reasonable amount of offense from the two pets.

My assessment of Brutes and teamplay lessons comes from a different place. A solo Brute doesn't have to worry about aggro management so much... Whereas a Stalker is always having to pay attention to aggro (and from my experience worries far less about explicitly trying to always set up for an AS, even solo). It has been my experience that players of less experienced Brutes can have aggro peeled from them by a wide variety of other ATs... Especially if the Brute is relying on a Taunt Aura. Experienced and dedicated Brutes can find themselves in a sort of 'aggro war' with other Brutes or Tanks, and a new player might not understand what is happening. In contrast, a Stalker will figure out a lot faster if their AS isn't geling with a team.

Before taking Hasten, I would take powers that allow single slotting of Luck of the Gambler Global Recharge. Hasten can be problematic for MMs that will be spamming powers because of the Endurance tax on MM powers.

IIRC, the next "threshold" for KB is at 11 points... that is, of the (single) enemies that do KB, their is a tier of them that do it with magnitude between 4 and 11. I believe it is possible to end up facing combat where multiple enemies may be stacking KB (Ruin Mages, Longbow, et al.) such that 8 points can provide some extra protection... but high defenses should mitigate this circumstance. KB protection is also purchasable as a temp power in a SG base, IIRC 90 minutes for +10 IIRC. The most annoying mission with KB (for me) is the RWZ Vanguard boss.

I also vote against Masterminds as a starter AT. They are not hard to solo with, but it is very easy to make a LOT of mistakes with them and the Endurance tax will not give a new player an idea of the different things a player can do with a primary and secondary. I'd also not recommend Brutes. The Fury mechanic is going to have a little learning curve, and (my opinion, YMMV) it is easy for new/solo Brute players to learn the wrong sort of lessons for team play. My recommendation would be Sentinel, because the secondaries are different, and can be somewhat forgiving. The Primaries will have enough going on to learn the ropes of them. I'd then opt for either a Scrapper or Stalker, with the latter if you want to quickly get a feel for being "sneaky" in missions.

Very rarely I will have a character that I want to get to 17-20(*1) PDQ... it will be a specific AT or using powersets I am very familiar with, and to get there I will usually just DFB or team with 2XP. Doesn't matter what it is, but I don't play in AE. Otherwise... ...I shift my attitudes a LOT. I usually will try to alternate between which arcs characters do. For example: Blue Side I may go KR or I may go Hollows. Many times I turn off XP just to do newspaper/radio missions. At some point I am doing SF/TF, which by themselves can be a LOT of XP. So I guess the answer is: "anything but a dedicated farm". (*1) I mention this level range, because this is pretty much when all ATs (except maybe VEATs) will "feel" like the final character. It's also when most of the enhancment sets are available for slotting. It has become very rare that I feel like I need Epic/Patron or Incarnate powers to enjoy a character.

As a regular Giant Monster Hunter, I'm in agreement that some buffs to GMs are called for. I'd have identified the following two items that move GMs towards the 'more trivial' end of the spectrum: The ToHit values by most of the open world GMs lead to most of their attacks missing. The HP scale of the GMs appeared to be based on the zone, so some GMs have fewer HP compared to others. I'm not looking forward to "increased Mezz"... IIRC the Jack in Irons Terrorize is already pretty long, if that gets any longer I hope that he can't recast it! I'd feel the same about other mezz attacks... but if that is the direction we want to go, I guess I will adapt. GM Resistance is already a bit of balancing act (for me) as there are some GMs that already resist my attacks... I can still defeat them but it takes longer. If the other GMs become more like those, that would seem to be balancing from my PoV, but time will tell (especially with the boost to MaxHP). I'd appreciate a few of "concessions" to players, with respect to GMs: a temp power to ST immobilize a reduced amount of time between open-world respawns (four hours is pretty long, especially if we have to clean up a spawn) more self-cleaning of GMs when the GM is defeated... or more of an indication that the event has not reset. The first point derives from Envenomed Daggers can (historically) overcome GM regeneration, but no temp power overcomes them running away. The second and third points have been somewhat mitigated by having the associated spawns be level-less, but this doesn't always happen: Croatoan wanderers often spawn with zone-capped levels, Jurassik Rubble and grand-rubbles will be zone capped, Boomtown Babbage summons lower level minions that can con grey. Having to clean up is a reasonable, sometimes bitter pill to ask (some) players to swallow. I suppose I had better connect with the launcher and go do some testing! EDIT: Oh, thanks for the change to the Lusca Rewards too! That makes it much more worth investing time into fighting that GM!

My experience has been that Blasters certainly have MOAR AOE (targets). and access to more offense (via their secondaries) but that Sentinels are flat-out better at surviving.... cue the "defeat enemies can't hurt you" chorus. I don't like the "tank mage" description, but I do have a Sentinel that shrugs of +N spawns like a Tank. It certainly can't hold aggro, but it is a surprisingly hardy character. How a Sentinel plays compared to a Blaster will IMO depend on the type of content being played (enemy types) as well as spawn sizes. Sentinels tend to have smaller AoEs, so small spawn sizes (x1) will drive them to go slower through a defeat all mission. Once spawn sizes increase, more enemies tend to be more clustered which doesn't hurt the Sentinels much in my experience.

FWIW, it is possible to face +20 level enemies in CoV, but you have to do it at level 20. (Inside an instanced mission, I mean)

I appreciate that my custom macros are not cleared when using /clear tray!

I can't believe the hyperbole that a character ever had trouble taking down enemies 10+ levels below them, unless the player is specifically thinking how they used to farm XP from DE Swarms, and when the Swarm AI was changed such that Swarm fled from damage auras this became an unreliable way to farm XP.