Crysis

Sorry, one more question. Does the Double XP apply to Incarnate XP towards earning the slots or not? Was all this covered somewhere in release notes because I can't seem to locate those if so.

If I am multitasking, which I often am, playing the game solo on indoor missions while sitting in a boring conference call, I almost always turn off my chat box. Entirely. If I think about it, I sometimes even use the ghide function to just isolate myself fully from invites, chats, general chat, whatever. And increasingly, I'm playing on a handheld PC. Chatting is awkward and takes some effort on those devices. It's hard enough to play this game via keyboard+mouse on a smaller device (I bought a folding keyboard and small mouse for travel) but that screen size is so small I really need the screen real estate back that the chat box takes up otherwise. And lets be honest, many of us who play regularly are here from the Live days, and that was 20+ years ago. My eyes aren't what they were 20 years ago, and the chat box needs a higher font size for me to use effectively, and that just takes up even more real estate. I will open up the Team chat box if I'm teaming, but habits being what they are, I sometimes am guilty of not reading it regularly as I should. I'm sure my SG mates think I'm being a snob or rude, but I don't mean to be. I'm just more focused on gaming than I am on chatting. I'd also say some of the BEST times I've had playing COH or any other multiplayer game is via voice chat, not typed chat. But there's precious few people who want to play that way, either due to shyness, language barriers, 'immersion' concerns or even technical limitations of their hardware. I just type all of this first to address your concerns that individual preferences and playstyle may just make the chat box less than useful to some players. PS-I have more than 30 people in my global ignore, but none of them for failure to respond to me. All because they were, IMHO, jerks and people I don't wish to ever play with again, let alone talk to in game. PPS-To the idea of allowing a team leader to override my screen with their forced comments dialog or whatever.....that is going to open up an outrageous form of in-game chat spamming. I already have people who ask me to read their blog or website or whatever showing up in broadcast. Imagine if I could simply interrupt your play session at will? As with all things, you do you, let others do likewise.

Amplifiers are really good if you exemp down and aren’t sporting an optimized leveling build (many of mine are end game builds). They effectively equate to an “exemp level shift” or two at lower levels. Critters at lower levels have a hard time punching through the buffs they offer. Heck, just the mez protection from the amplifiers is worth it. Also always take the temp attacks, at least the freebies. Sometimes you need a ranged weapon like the Blackwand to do a pull. Or just because it looks cool just equipping it for magic themed characters. And I rarely take full travel powers these days as between Athletic/Ninja/beast run and sprint plus a flight pack you’ve got that covered. Between those and built in health/stamina these days those really free up some other useful power picks.

So its both double XP -and- influence rewards vs using a double xp booster where you get no rewards. Then yes def the new way to PL.

2.5 years away? A lot? A whole lot. I suggest you go spend some time in the Patch notes and perhaps read through them. Too many changes to even begin to outline them all here. But do know these three things..... 1) Sentinels got some love and are actually half decent now. 2) Several MM primary sets were reworked and turned from meh to OMGWTFBBQ (Ninjas, Necro and Mercs in particular), and one of the newest sets (Marine Affinity) appear to be almost tailor made to benefit MM's. 3) There's little reason to roll a Brute these days vs a Tank....although I put this last one on the list purely to pick fights. Seriously, go read the patch notes since you've been gone! Patch Notes - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com)

Yeah good callout. Although does that work in AE also?

Yup, used my secondary account S/L blaster (if you can believe it lol) to PL a new AFK tanker on my farming account. Works well in new AE environment but again....rewards are very much less what they once were.

All you need to about current state of AE farming, maps and builds included: I still get sub 5-min clear times on my old school Spines/Fire farmer running AA’s revised meteor map doing -active- farming. But as the thread demonstrates, tankers and S/L farms now hold top spots for passive farming. You can easily respec and reuse your old farmer for effective active farming, although the reward nerfs likely wont net you anywhere near the same gains. These days i just use my farmer for powerleveling new alts to 32-35 to blow by the monotony of lower levels.

Wondering if it’s as effective as it is with /Time? I took it on one character and it seems to only boost +Def/+Res/+Regen for 5-7 seconds maybe?

At 42, she'd doing fine, about the same as my Ninja/Marine did at similar level. Can solo AV's, some take a little longer but thanks to all the exotic damage types produced by Demons most go down faster versus Thugs/ or Ninja/'s. Only issue I have is with Lash. It's supposed to do KnockDOWN but given the KD already in play with Tide Pool, it's doing KnockBACK even on bosses. Just have to slot it with a KD proc to deal with that until I get Fold Space into the build later.

Yours works, but I get a "PetCommandFailNoMatch" error the first two button presses...then it renames the thing. It takes a few seconds to spawn Barrier Reef, so it makes sense it cannot rename it until it's spawned. Of course, Devs being Devs, the damn thing resets its name every time I go through a door, use an elevator, etc. So I'll just be pressing the button a few times to get it right. EDIT: Spoke to soon, since you can resummon Barrier Reef and it just kills the old one and resummons the new, I have to be careful to only press this macro button when I have no Barrier Reef spawned, or it kills the renamed one and replaces it with....wait for it.....Barrier Reef again. Still beats doing it manually, so thank you!

Speaking of Pets and Macros..... Is there a way to summon a psuedopet and rename it at the same time? For example, you can rename Barrier Reef but it reverts to plain old "Barrier Reef" each time you resummon it. Would be nice to resummon it and rename it all at the same time.

For most MM’s today, KB protection Mag 12 is almost required against Council and other mobs. I generally can easily get 9-12 with procs without sacrificing much elsewhere, especially w/Marine typical builds and slotting.

Looking forward to playing this one, hope she does ok. Right at 50% S/L personal Defense, which should help when leveling before Destiny>Barrier. All pet uniques included. Learned some pretty good slotting for the Marine powers that have served me well. KB resistance of 12 points to keep on my feet while keeping everything else off of theirs. I'm kinda addicted to Fold Space with Marine as it really helps to make the most of your Tide Pool by lumping and dropping all the critters right there for you to burn. Fun bio/backstory as well: Angry Ariel Demon Marine MM.mbd

At lvl 50, zero incarnates, no temps and without any level shifts, I'm getting 82 seconds (average across 6 tests) Pylon times. This is slightly better than my Necro/Marine, and quite a bit better than Thugs even with double gang war. Smoke Flash is a must I found to max out Ninja DPS. With fast recharge, it's up pretty often and it's almost guaranteed to deliver two-three crits -per ninja- when it's activated. Coupled with Shifting Tides, it's noticeable, especially with Brine'd targets. To fit in Smoke Flash, I dropped Web Nade and stuck those slots into Tide Pool and Soothing. I also dropped the second slots for the two travel powers (SS and Teleport) as there wasn't enough +Ranged DEF bonus there to get me much out of those, although I kept both with the -KB procs. I also swapped Teleport for Combat Teleport, which when pinned to a bind (I use Lshift+LClick) is very handy for repositioning myself in tight quarters and/or to line up Soothing Wave. It always seems I'm missing one of the Ninja's with Soothing when they need it most. Besides, CT is just too fun, especially when you use the smoke bomb animation. Whitecapping is your own personal damage dealer with the one arrow attack doing pathetic levels of damage...pretty much limited to picking off runners. As stated by Mek above though, being Def based, higher level content takes out the Ninja's quite quickly. Maybe level shifts will help with that some, as well as Destiny>Barrier, but I suspect anything +RES will survive better than anything +DEF in hard mode missions. Modified @Meknomancer build attached, all credit to them. You can sub in a few things for the purples and Hami's on a budget and they don't make a huge difference in effectiveness. Namely: -Explosive Strike proc for Soulbound Allegiance -Devastation w/Proc for Apocalypse (although that Hold proc won't go off that often) -Scirocco proc for the Armageddon proc -Positron Blast w/Proc for the Ragnarok's -Acc/Dam Edict of the Master for the Nucl Hami-O -Any To-Hit/End for the Cyto Hami-0 (although Gaussian Buildup proc is a waste given your attacks, it doesn't hurt) Yes, you won't be min-maxxed but you can't slot these until 50 anyways, so may as well use the subs I listed above to "be all you can be" until/unless you decide to make the investments. Otherwise, build is as attached. You can also Boost all the defensive pieces etc to really eek out a little more. But if going for Barrier, kinda wasteful IMO. YMMV. Tidal Temptress - Mastermind (Ninjas - Marine Affinity).mbd

On Live I had a few friends and we’d play permadeath rules. If defeated, you had to scrap the alt and roll again. Only a few of us made it to 30, and only one made it to 50 (a Defender no less). This was pre IO’s. These days I have to really try to die during normal PVE missions. Its just not much of a risk outside of * TF’s.

I didnt realize people read the stuff in these boxes. These interruptions really kill the DPS.

BTW, wanted to call out @Meknomancer and their slotting of Brine with TotN. General consensus early on was this was a skippable power. Slotting Health actually improves the -MaxHP debuff. If applied at start of engagement, when health is at top end for target, this slotting is -very noticeable.- Combined with the extra Crits from Smoke Flash, Ninjas chew up an EB, GM or AV quickly. Dont sleep on taking and slotting Brine this way.

Ah yes, this pairing was/is the standard “Rambo” build. It’s been a spell since I built mine but you may appreciate some of the builds discussed here. And @Nemu did a nice reworking (dare I say….Rambo First Blood: Part 2) after i27 changes dropped here.

You forgot BoS to target>Ki Push>Executioners Shot kill while they are still in mid-air and flying backwards. DP/MC just ooooooozes style. Maybe more than any other pairings. Whomever did the animations for MC and DP I headcanon got married and had a flock of beautiful babies together. Because these two are just…..PB&J levels of meant to be together. Seriously, any time I get bored of the game I roll out one of my various retired DP/MC builds (I’ve three now) and the poetic combat just gives me a rush for the game all over again!

Just making sure you know that Dual Pistols and Ninja Training or Ninja Tools accomplishes this? My Deadpool homage is a DP/Regen/Ninja Sentinel and one of my fave Blasters, named Sig Sauer Samurai, is a DP/Ninja Blaster.

Mek, where would you place Ninjas vs Thugs? Both are Defense oriented melee.

Marine Affinity really has opened up a lot of opportunities for MM's, almost like it's a Dev's gift to the class. Have pretty much finished off my Necro/Marine and have a Thugs/Marine and Merc/Marine sitting in the library of alts ready to be leveled up and slotted to 38 or so. Haven't built a Ninja/Marine yet but seems like being heavy melee focused with crits its a good combo on paper. Anyone take one to Incarnate levels yet? Any play/slotting notes to share?

I have a 1:45 with no Incarnates slotted at all. So I can believe that sub-50 second defeat times are very possible with necro/marine.

GW is def not that powerful. Even double GW via Burnout isn’t much DPS. Quite the spectacle though.