Coyotedancer

Nice! With that name? You just have to be a tank. XD

I hate to say it... but even with a stuff-a-palooza one-big-room build, the item list really is the surest way to select those "problem items". It's just about the ONLY reliable way of selecting the NPCs.

Yep. All that. I was actually told by a couple of team-mates (Who, admittedly, were all the sort of players who are fond of power-builds) not two days ago that Barrier is "pretty much useless" and so a poor Destiny choice to make for teaming these days... As Mac says, when you're running with maxed-out/soft-capped characters, it really doesn't add much. Even when you're NOT running with that kind of group (That is to say, when you're with a lower-powered bunch who may NOT be capped to everything-) the most powerful effects still don't last all that long. They're an excellent Panic Button when the group looks like its about to be overwhelmed, but the big buff is short-lived. 'Pretty much just enough to get ahead of the hot water, but not what I'd call game-breaking.

Subjugators are nasty things... That Confuse effect isn't to be taken lightly if you're running with a partner or a team. (The matched pair of Stalkers that a friend and I were running together nearly killed each other once upon a time because of a Subjugator and some ridiculously bad timing with their quick-assassination attacks. It was not a Good Thing.) If you can't flatten the thing instantly, you'll have to do a little target-juggling... When I was going through with my solo Fire sentinel, my usual routine was to blast them until they summoned the seers, then switch to the adds and take them out as quickly as possible, then go back to finish the Subjugator itself.

Might I recommend a human-only rather than a shifter? (Says the person with the human-only/perma-lightform/"photonic sentinel" PB-as-Heliomancer-mage character)

Oh, I know. Trust me... I've had a lot of Defenders over the course of my time playing. (My first City character, and first 50, was a Kinetic way-back-when) My Defenders and their Corruptor cousin aren't my soloing characters. That's what the Stalkers, Sentinels, Scraps and Brute are for. XD

My Harry grumbles and says something like "Yeah. 'Always having to drag those newbies into the fire... They're endless... I mean, sheesh. How many Defenders does my player really NEED anyway?"

The level of item-clipping most of us use when constructing objects and environments would probably make even that difficult. When you have things like pianos and pipe organs made of dozens of discreet objects clipped through each other, you might end up spending the entire raid trying to take apart any one thing. XD

Hey now. Don't be hatin' on the seafood. >_<

Changes made to the base building system make turning base raids back on impossible. All of us who build basically break the pathing and item placement and room alignment rules a dozen times before breakfast, proverbially speaking.

I had a very large collection of characters in my past City life, mostly just by virtue of having been at it for a long time and having wanted to try out a lot of different things... Most of them had made it to 50. Most of them had completed builds. When Incarnates came along, most of them ended up with a full set of iToys. They were a heck of a lot of work. <_< I promised myself that I wasn't going to do that again when Homecoming came along. I wasn't going to have a "cast of hundreds". I wasn't even going to have a cast of dozens. I was determined about that. *facepalms* Currently, I have 30 counting Harry. (My farmer, who's the only character on my secondary account) That's about two dozen more than I wanted or expected to have when I started. All but four are finished at this point, thankfully... Level fifty, builds I'm comfortable with, all their iToys… Which makes them a reasonably "low stress" collection, but it's still many, many more alts than I ever thought I'd make here. My tendency has been to only make a new one once I've completely finished someone else, which has helped keep the number of concurrent in-progress characters pretty low. I've also taken to jump-starting new ones to the 30s these days by tossing them into a cave run with Harry. I have absolutely zero desire to ever run the low-level game content ever again. Been there, done those same missions way, WAY too many times. XP So, yeah. While I doubt I'll ever have a horde the size of VT's character list... once an alt-a-holic, always an alt-a-holic, I guess. I've failed pretty spectacularly at NOT being.

I wasn't aware that I said you did... *I* don't do flashy, That's not to say in any way that other people shouldn't if that's their preference. I apologize if I seemed to imply otherwise.

'Decided last week not to keep my "other tank"... Able is up for grabs,

My tastes are... a little different from other builders' tastes, I suspect. I've been told outright that my base designs are "too dark", "dingy" and that they "just don't POP", even when I'm very pleased with them. I prefer low-key, natural environments... Wood, stone, water, plant-life... that look like they might be actual, lived-in places. I don't do 'flashy', so I tend to avoid bright colors, bright lighting and objects that are FX-heavy eye-catchers. (The Sanctum of Shadows' navigation beacon is about the showiest thing I've ever constructed-) I don't always put things in easily-accessible locations. Sometimes I'll take Form over Function. … And while I do tend to build big, I also do a lot of small detail work, and tend to end up with multiple micro-environments within that large-scale design. All that said, I KNOW my tastes are odd, so I don't in any way expect other bases to conform to my preferences. I don't judge them based on what I would or wouldn't build. I believe in "To each their own".

Yeah... My bird-things used to grouch to their human friends about those billboards back-in-the-day. They're pretty obnoxious IC if you're playing a non-human.

Backstory-wise, my Oranbegan characters are all heavily focused on the Temple complex in Primeva… They get to be ticked off at both Longbow ("What's with that 'setting up the Agincourt base right on our bloody doorstep'-thing, you inconsiderate jerks?!") *and* Arachnos ("Oh. Look. Here come the spiders again. Barging through our ruins like they own the place. Stealing our stuff. Being blasty, stabby a-holes... AND they left that Nalor guy over there playing around with our portals again! Sheesh.") before any of the shifty villain-types or crusading heroes even come into it. There are a LOT of people you can be annoyed with on red side is what I'm saying here. Spiders, heroes, nut-jobs with flame-throwers.... Take your pick. XD That aside, I do have red side characters. I just tend to be mostly-solo when I'm on that side of the world. If you happen to see me on Tavaris, Kaikara or Ferrian, drop me a message and I'm usually up for some running around not-solo, though.

Hmm... It wouldn't solve the "only has three powers because they're natively lowbies" issue with some groups... But I wonder if it would be possible to make pretty much everything in a mission level-less like the invasion mobs are? That way you'd fight them as whatever level you happen to be.

A solid "smash everything and its brother" ITF with a high-powered team moves pretty quickly and will get you quite a lot of INF. Plus it's good fun and there's the added bonus of a tidy sum of merits.

See also: Heading out to the Shard and running someone like Hammond's missions on +4/x8 solo. Sure, the missions themselves are nothing to write home about, but those Rularuu goons? Not trivial in large numbers. Even a really well-built character has to pay attention with those guys... Especially if you end up with more than one group at a time, which is likely on some of those cavern maps with a lot of captives.

I've never thought of sorting characters as a particularly odd habit... but I definitely do that, too. Tavaris and his oddball little group of Sanctum magi are all on my first page. Their "supporting cast" are all on the second (Their thorn wielders, living ward spell, artifact ship and such-), along with the two allied Temple magi and their stray thorn wielder and her sword. My time travelers from Nova Primeva are on the third page along with the new Ordus Obscura pair, and the little handful of non-Oranbegans I have are all clustered together on the fourth. Associated characters are always next to each other on the list, too. All three alternate versions of Kai are together, for instance. Likewise Merlin and Mordred (a couple) or Ivory and Dorian (siblings).

I'll admit it, I loved the idea of the Circle raising a bit of the old city and actually having some zone space of their own, too... But then, I'm biased. XD I'd still love to see it happen some day.

But you're not really talking about adding an optional "hard mode", GB... You're talking about moving up the base-line of the game. That's going to affect everyone who plays. Not just the people running taskforces solo at +4/x8. And yes. We all know why people are griping about the whole game being an easy-mode cake walk. When you specifically and intentionally build characters to trivialize the game, you sort of have to expect that, yes, you're not really going to be challenged anymore. But that doesn't mean that in response the game should be rebalanced around those characters. That the low end still exists and shouldn't be marginalized just to cater to the high end is what seems to keep getting lost in these conversations. The people grumbling on the forums about how much of a punk Recluse is or how easy it is to stomp x8 missions into complete mush with our over-engineered nightmares just aren't the only people playing the game. It's a mistake to act like we are. But it's a mistake that's also very easy to make. That's why I keep reminding people that the low end exists. Any proposed changes to things like the base powers or statistics of enemies NEED to keep that in mind. Additional optional difficulty settings on top of the base game? Sure. Have at it. Sounds like fun. Changing everything from the ground up to make it harder across the board? Tread carefully, because what's a challenge for UberMan will absolutely flatten Captain N0tS0L33t.

Just so! XD

Just remember that not everyone out there plays a character with an engineered IO set-build. Not everyone is particularly skilled or experienced, either. If you move that base-line TOO much... Either to account for those who know the game inside out, or to balance for UberBuilds… you're apt to make things pretty dicey for anyone who isn't at that point. You just can't build for the high end without thinking about what that's likely to do on the low side.

*toggles Stealth on and hides (poorly) behind a hedge* FRUIT NINJA!