Coyotedancer

I duo/trio just often enough to need a Taunt... because there's always that *ONE GUY* in every group who's just convinced that your 'Troller or your Blaster must die. Even when he's got a Brute in his face. Or a Tank stabbing him in the spleen...

And here I was giving the side-eye to the Moon Pies....

Absolutely! Anything else would just be... wrong.

If I have time this afternoon, I may have Amtes take one for the team, so to speak. I'll take her in at +4 just to see how quickly those higher level spawns shred her pack of howling monstrosities. Just guessing from what I've seen so far? The mobs will eat them alive. The Prince *might* hold out a little better than the others if I focus absolutely everything on keeping him alive, but I suspect he'll get worn down faster than I can counter sooner rather than later. And without the rest of the pack running along in bodyguard mode, there's only so much that my MM herself can survive. 'Should be interesting... (My only other MM is a Necro/Thermal, but I haven't shifted her over to the test server yet. I'm curious how more fragile minions than demons handle the new Council and Circle mobs, though. Anyone got a Ninja/ or Necro/ they're willing to throw out of the frying pan and into the fire to find out?)

I'm not attesting to anything the speedsters may think. I'm a devoted solo/duo player... I don't really care what they do or why. 😜

Yep... We'll have more runaways if that Council mission was anything to judge by, but it's not going to break much at the end of the day. I'll miss the entertainment factor of it, though.

Welcome to the way the modern City is... Speed is king. Rush to the end as efficiently as you can. Get your reward. Move on. I'm not sure exactly when that became 'The Way We Play Now' for everything, but speeding has been A Thing with TFs and such since the Live days.

I've never tried it on a Blaster (Not a fan of the AT-), so I can't say anything about how it changes their game at all... But it's useful for keeping things from running off on a Mastermind. It's never felt like an exploit to me because it tends to miss at least as many things (and as often-) as it hits with them. It's fun, but far from some sure-thing. As it stands now? If the current rate on test goes through, I'll probably end up respeccing my Demons/Time MM out of it. Running a +1/x6 Council scanner, I saw two or three of the goons per spawn bounce. Once. 😅

Just tossing out another bit of "experience seeing these in the wild"- I went into a scanner at +1/x6, which is the usual "cruising speed" setting that I use for Amtes, my Demons/Time MM. She's a full Incarnate with what I'd call a decent, but not seriously Min/Maxed uber-high-end build. (She's probably pretty close to an average "finished" Homecoming character that belongs to someone who's serious, but not necessarily a MIDS-master.) Over-all, she handled it pretty well. The spawns were absolute HELL on the minions, though... I eventually gave up resummoning them and just went through the rest with her two lts, the Prince and our little Hellfire implings, plus her Lores when they cycled. It wasn't worth the END to try to keep the little guys around and upgraded. They died too fast. That worries me a little. If I was having trouble keeping the minions alive at +1, which is usually a low enough difficulty not to make life impossible for them, the revamped mobs may prove to be an absolutely non-starter for Mastermind pets at +3 or +4.

I don't consider the current bounce rate an exploit... so... in this particular case? Yes. The ideal solution would have been to make Bonfire less of a complete disaster in the first place, but I guess this was easier.

Nope. This was a regular spawn off on their own. There were no others anywhere nearby to get individual critters mixed up with.

If they were interested in "fixing" Bonfire they would make it less of a garbage power to begin with.

Hmm... 112% not a fan of the change in bounce rate with a KD enhancement in the Mastermind version of Bonfire. It's not a small nerf and I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of it. Honestly, I feel a little like we're having our collective wrists slapped for daring to turn an otherwise garbage power into something that was actually sort-of useful. I mean... how DARE we. The nerve! 😝

I suspected they might not be working as intended by doubling up like that (Given that some lower-level effects, like the Quicksand that Earth Thorns can cast or the Dark aura that the big Spectral Demon Lords do, are one-at-a-time effects-), but just hadn't been noticed/mentioned yet because having two of the same mage type in a given spawn group appears to be rare.

We can have Clown Masterminds at long last?

*nods* Yakety Sax would be the way of it, yeah. 😝 And I finally got a Nyctwolf! He was sort of adorable. In a creepy fuzzy-dark-thing sort of way.

My wish-list is modest... To have those extra few Circle costume bits that males got ages ago ported to female characters... A Tuatha Champion or Bres Aether transformation costume... To be able to use wings with the tuxedo tails coat again... An Earth epic pool for Sentinels... A purple Fear enhancement set... Oh... and to get those nifty Nemesis steam-ponies as a Flying Carpet/Void Skiff/Rocket Board style travel power! Just because they're cool looking. That's about it, really. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with whatever we have.

I'll have a look at DA this afternoon... and good to know re: our gaggle of ghosts. Is the layered Tar Patch working as intended as well? I never did find a group with two of any of the other magi varieties, so still no clue if the Earthquakes are also coming in multiples. ETA: The Circle in DA seem to be properly Old School. No sign of any of our new-fangled friends spawning with the groups.

Was running around with White Thorn again a few minutes ago and noticed one potentially odd thing... Should the Masters of Death be allowed to layer their Tar Patches when you have more than one in a particular spawn? I ran into a group with two and they promptly did so. Which was problematic, even on a character as tough as Thorn. ETA: Running through the rest of the map, only that one group had two Master magi of the same variety. The others all had only one of any given type, which I assume is the "usual" expected spawn. Given that, I wasn't able find out if a group having multiple Ruins could also layer Earthquakes. Oh, and I encountered one particularly large spawn that was nothing but a collection of assorted Spectrals. I hadn't seen that before in any of the missions I ran with Kestrel, or in Thorn's previous runs. Every other group on the map had a wide variety of things, so that also seemed strange. RNG weirdness but otherwise working-as-intended?

You won't get a sword, no... But they have both a self-heal and an ally-heal.

They are great fun now, aren't they? I took one of my toughest Stalkers (White Thorn, the Hero-side version of Kai, who's KM/Bio-) into a run with them last night... Solo again, since that's typically how I play. I figure the "Always Teaming" sorts will cover how they handle with a group... And they gave her a pretty tough time of it. No deaths, but I ended up leaning a lot more heavily than I'm used to on her iToys and inspiration drops. For reference, this is the Stalker that I successfully took through the entire Dark Astoria arc series solo at +4/x8 just to see if I could. She's no slouch. That said? I think the Circle groups at +4/x8 as they stand now on Test are actually more of a challenge than those Incarnate level BP and Talons were. Which make me wonder if the changes to the regular high level Circle are also going to show up in Dark Astoria's Incarnate version of the faction... I haven't been out there yet to look.

I've said this before... but I'm still going to say it again. Locking away costume parts in a game that's as much about character customization as City has always been is STUPID. It was a bad idea back when the old devs did it, and the idea hasn't gotten any better with age. Want something to grind for? You have PAPs. There's your little "rare drop" carrot dangling at the end of a stick, that you can turn into a weird aura effect or a MiniMe if that's the kind of thing you need in a game to feel accomplished.

Oh goodie. Typical MMO "gear grind".... No thanks. I had to deal with enough of that in Aion to last me the rest of my life.

Over on Ev we're roleplaying a server that matters....

Over in Perez Park, a group of magi and their followers watch with interest... as one of them, a fellow called The Accountant Dire by his cabalmates (and just "George" by his friends-), ticks off a careful count on a parchment scroll. "So," one curious Guide asks, "How many of those floating red windsocks did they bring along, anyway?" "I count one hundred and sixteen so far," the Accountant Dire answers with a flourish of his Fury-quill pen. "This should be a most useful windfall for the Currently Incorporeal among us! We shall give them a few days to settle in and become secure in their victory. And then?" He grins. "We begin the collection. It was most polite of Archnos to bring us a fresh supply of magically-attuned body donors. And the descendants of our old enemy, no less!" [Villain Rule 1: Never waste an opportunity. XD]