Crysis

I may get shot down for saying this but two bourbons into a stormy Sat night why not? Sentinels are the AT for players who whine about the durability of Blasters. They fix that aspect very well and still provide ranged attacks. Damage is lower than a Blaster but survivability is so high you have plenty of time to take down your opponents without fear of death. Sents are Blasters with training wheels. As of right now that is the sole purpose of the AT. If the Devs ever fix the damage/aggro issues with Sents then, and only then, do Sents become ranged Scrappers.

Wow! I’m using this for my “Priestess of Pele” Fire/Fire/Fire Sentinel. Fitting as she’s the Sentinel Guardian of the Cult to Tutu Pele!

To add to this, many MM's who prefer the "Tankermind" playstyle will take the Presence pool to get Provoke. This is a Taunt power. Any MM can draw initial aggro on themselves by just jumping into a spawn with an aura running or throwing out an attack. But if your henchmen are on Defensive Follow, they will attack whatever attacked the MM until its dead....and then just stand there like dopes until/unless you keep getting attacked. Which, you sometimes won't be once they pull aggro onto themselves. So either you are running a toggle/aura as the MM that allows you to keep drawing all aggro onto yourself and/or you grab Provoke and spam it to keep pulling aggro onto yourself, thus keeping your henchmen from taking too much aggro on themselves. Personally, I don't bother with Provoke. On teams, it's a low-magnitude taunt and you'll have even scrappers pulling aggro off of you so it's not very useful. And solo, almost all the secondary's have some other form of pulling aggro onto yourself...inclusive of personal attacks. So not needed IMO.

I made my Necro/Storm into Michael Jackson and “Thriller”

Agreed on Gale. I typically slot mine with at least one FF +Recharge, a SA KB2KD and if I’ve slots to spare a couple of other procs. It’s used constantly. Highly underrated power.

I have a Demon/ Bots/ Necro/ and Thugs/Storm build. None have Provoke. Between your rain, Tornado, Gale and LS, you’ve little reason to worry about pulling aggro onto yourself to play the henchmen in Defensive mode. I also skipped Hurricane, or respecc’d out of it, on all of them. The neat thing about /Storm is that it’s primarily your damage power that augments your primary. It’s got some debuffing, sure, but that’s not why you play it. You maximize your storm damage output, slot +Recharge liberally and then you’ve easily got two Tornado’s, almost perpetual Freezing Rain and two Lightning Storms out, and everything is well controlled with knockdown assuming you put the procs in where appropriate. With such high Recharge native recharge (I’m typically running north of 225% when moving to next spawn), grab Burnout for a fun party trick of triple Tornado and Lightning storm. Pylons melt quickly with /Storm assuming you have native DEF or RES up on the henchmen (VERY easy to do with Demons and Thugs, little more work for other sets). What I’d suggest is go grab any of the /Storm builds I’ve or anyone else has posted, go grab a Mercs/anything build, and then just use MIDS to change the primary on the /Storm build to Mercs. With few exceptions, most people six-slot their henchmen and single slot the two upgrade powers. Then just slot like you’ve seen elsewhere for Mercs. Easy enough to add/delete slots to powers using MIDS. Take a look @StrikerFox vids in the Pylon for MM thread. There’s some videos of Mercs/Storm doing pylon runs in there. Maybe they are still around and you can get some feedback after posting your first try at a build.

Outside of a couple /SR characters and a Bots/Time MM I never hit softcapped DEF until late 40’s and usually 50. I could but to your point it’s not usually worth it without running a sub-par build for damage. And it’s very easy to achieve soft capped DEF to positional or typed past 50 without even trying that hard. Chase the fun first. When dying too much interrupts your fun -then- chase a Def or Res soft cap.

Alllll the respecs. Even the recipe ones I’ve gotten from packs. And usually I end up running a respec trial even after that. And on at least a couple I’ll have a dual build on top of all that. All of them. I use all of them.

I was going to say.....I can fully understand anyone dropping out of any TF or even Black Swan mission that takes place in the Shadow Shart. That entire zone and all its content was written by a sadistic intern.

I probably dreamt it during the “dark years” between Live shutdown and HC release, but I could have sworn that was what the LFG function was -supposed- to do....auto create a team from people who threw up their LFG flag. If it doesn’t, opportunity lost. It would add a whole new dimension to PUGs that were formed literally by “first available LFG flag.” Of course, you’d likely end up with a team of all scrappers, but heck...they never team anyways.

I have an AFK farmer well over 1000, but I don’t think that counts as I’m only playing it 2m out of every 15-30 at most. But wow....that’s something.

The thing about +4/x8 missions that many “I’m the 50+3 Incarnate leader, and if I can handle this so can everyone else” leaders don’t get is how MM’s play. If I have an MM on my team I -always- note how their henchmen are holding up. Their T1’s in many cases won’t be surviving a single spawn let alone contributing much, and their T2’s not much better. But again, I take it personally that the MM might not be having a good time teaming because of the feeling of lack of contribution. If you want that kind of XP and really won’t be able to contribute much just go hang out in AE, plenty of sitting opportunities abound there. But again, as a leader, I feel that pressure to shepherd the weaker players while still catering to the stronger ones. And that subtracts from my fun factor for the night. I end up feeling like I’m playing Sim-Hero rather than playing a Super-something myself. Maybe this all just goes back to the original “Sidekicking” mechanism in this game, something that attracted me at first and still sticks with me to this day. Likewise, I have great admiration for regular TF, Trial or mission leaders. They go on my friends’ list in a hurry, especially the regular League operators (looking at YOU @Oklahoman). It takes a special kind of heart to stuff your tray full of helpful instruction macros, assemble the league, deal with the drama and otherwise just LEAD something. I’m glad they are here, but in total honesty, at a 1:7 ratio for full teams, they are the rarest of Supers we have in the game. Thank you from the bottom of my introverted little black heart.

At some point I must’ve modded mine because all the glowies basically say over and over in a maniacal voice “OVER HERE OVER HERE OVER HERE OVER HERE...” and it’s uh....quite obvious where they are.

I just snagged “Honeypot” on the first try last night, wanting to create an undercover police officer who basically convinced some of the felons she snared in an undercover sting operation working for her as her henchmen Thugs. I was actually surprised it was available. I’ve had a great many that also were surprisingly available over the years, both on Live and on HC. However, the opposite has also happened. In both Live and within the first couple of days of HC being released I tried to snag my REAL LIFE nickname (which, also, was my main in PnP Champions and D&D before that). And in BOTH instances, not only the actual spelling, but all the various “133T” spelling variations of my nickname were ALL taken. It’s not even all that common and is actually a foreign-language word. But my doppelgänger must be out there somewhere.

I can only speak for myself, but I take it personally when I’m leading a team and people are getting clobbered. Then, if I try to turn down difficulty, everybody INCLUDING THE PEOPLE GETTING CLOBBERED drops team looking for a +4/x8 group. And if you actually try to lead, there’s always the players who don’t even read in-game chat box, who don’t speak/read English natively or who for other reason are just in steamroll mode. So ultimately, I tend to only lead if it’s a series of missions to accomplish a very specific goal (like, Maria Jenkin’s AV arc, for example) or just blind radio missions where I know the PUG will be forming/reforming/dropping/adding as the night goes on and none of us are really in it other than for XP and giggles. So basically, leading gains you almost nothing and actively deducts from the fun-factor of what is and always has been a very non-competitive, casual gaming experience for me. It’s a co-op game for the most part (at least for PVE) and I prefer to not place or have placed any expectations on my playstyle accordingly.

I got all excited at title thinking someone had figured out a way to play this game in VR mode on a Quest.......

This Redside vs Blueside (and sometimes Goldside) has been a dead horse beating for a long, long time. Personally, I like having options for the early game (thus Gold side) and for some variety in mission structure, maps and enemies. But yes, in general, you’ll find much less teaming available Redside than Blue. But on the other hand, when a team IS available on Red it usually tends to hold its cohesiveness better IMO. Maybe its because people had to make a tiny bit of effort to switch sides to join, or perhaps because it’s a player who just prefers that side. Blueside PUG’s tend to form/disband/reform quickly, sometimes in just one or two missions. Redside teams tend to last longer. Might just be me, dunno.

Wow, exactly the kind of answer I was hoping I’d get. Thank you!

Was flipping through some old posts and ran across this little gem from Pax... I know how BG mode works, and always considered it the same as Resistance for damage calculation purposes. Of course, it's dynamic based on the number of pets you have out and whether or not they are all in the appropriate stance, etc. In fact, BG mode is why I generally build for Defense caps on MM's first to have layered mitigation capabilities. Rune or Hybrid Melee or even one of the Epic +RES shields was my backup if I needed more RES than what I could natively attain from my secondary and BG mode combined. But my question is....does the BG damage-sharing effect basically always come out to the same as +RES for damage-taken purposes? In other words, it's a +RES to all damage types and thus 'stacks' with whatever other native +RES I'm already running? Finally, I don't suppose there's anyway to show this in MIDS is there? I may be grossly overslotting some of my builds for +RES that don't really need it once you factor in BG mode.

One mans OP is another’s “Totally Awesome!!!!”

It’s not like this game is particularly difficult for any AT to play, assuming you work the Notoriety scale and/or understand the baseline mechanics of the AT you are playing. But I guess we look at the game a bit differently. I view Scrappers (and to similar extent Brutes and Tanks) as the lower end of the difficulty slider. Their playstyle is arguably the easiest in that you just wade in and start swinging. There’s room for some tactics (eg; take out the debuffers first) but in general, there’s not much more to it than move and hit. Ironically, I don’t think Blasters (and to some extent Corrs and even Defenders) are all that different. They just don’t have to wade into battle to do it. Build for Ranged capped Defense, zip in and nuke, zip out and AOE/ST from range. But that definitely is a -slightly- more difficult playstyle tactic than “wade in and start punching.” This game is not difficult, not even on the highest setting. So the only thing to add any degree of difficulty to cater to the various players out there is the AT you use and how to maximize it’s own DPS. Can I agree Scrappers put out more DPS and survive longer? Solo, against almost any +4/x8 PVE content, yes I can. Can I take down an AV faster with a Beam/Traps Corruptor than many scrappers? Yup, most certainly can. How about with a Water/Plant Blaster? Properly tuned for that activity, maybe. But I have all three of those and can choose to do the deed in very different ways and survive them all. I have no desire to delete those three and just have one Scrapper that does everything because then I’m done with the game and walk away.

Since last years exemplaring nerf, most influence farming shifted to AFK farming running multiple accounts at once. I generally do so only while I’m at work using my ShadowPC account and operating the game sessions from my iPhone. Maybe 20-25 mins per run (sometimes shorter if I’m sitting at my desk and can more frequently check into the AFK fleet), times multiple accounts, and a typical 8 hour session of not really playing adds up daily. I don’t vend anything during the day other than during my lunch break. Total time needed to exit/reset the various farmers per run is seconds so not like I’m really focused. I still “active farm” but any more it’s just to quickly PL an alt up to level 27-32 or so. 27 in about 15 mins, 32 in about 25 mins.

I may have just duplicated a bug I discovered once before, but thought perhaps it was just bad memory on part. In short, it allows you an unlimited supply of Enhancement Catalysts. How do I report the details without revealing what is essentially an exploit?

Speaking of changes on Beta..... I have a number of MM’s who used Rune of Protection from the Sorcery pool. There’s huge changes inbound for RoP in particular, but that entire pool in general. While I wish they had left RoP alone, I must say that the changes they’ve made to the remainder of the pool appear to be a bit of a buff for MM’s in particular. Spirit Ward and Enflame are now toggles, and Arcane Bolt know can do significantly more damage. I was on Test server yesterday and I’m actually -VERY- pleased with how everything else has been adjusted, although I’ll miss the uptime/duration of RoP. But be sure to check it out if you’ve not been paying attention.

I find with Arachnos the trick is engagement play style. Ironically, while I’m not in favor of herding tactics, it works -exceedingly- well for Arachnos since the majority of their nasty stuff is delivered from range. Jump in, grab aggro, duck behind something and let them come to you, having team lie in wait until they are bunched up. This seems to work far better than chasing Psi resist/def bonuses. And, as stated, inspirations or temp powers when needed. But once I started herding Arachnos, they ceased to be an issue for me.