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Redlynne

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Everything posted by Redlynne

  1. In which case ... obviously ... what you should be advocating in favor of is a lower damage cap on AoE attacks, rather than an across the board nerf to the base damage of AoE attack powers.
  2. Just ran into an edge case this morning where Dimension Shift allowed me to do what I shouldn't have been able to do. So I was just finishing up pulverizing Outcasts in Boomtown (defeat 15) before logging out to get ready for my RL Day Job, so I needed to log out in the next 10 minutes or so ... but when I defeated the last Outcast I got a 90 minute Timed Mission to defeat the Auctioneer in Steel Canyon. Needless to say, much swearing ensued. So I hightailed it over to the mission door in Steel Canyon and used Reveal on the warehouse map to figure out where to go ... raced past everything (along the ceiling) into the final room, found the named Boss (Snow-Pac) and defeated the room he was in ... and still needed to go click 4 glowies on the map. More swearing ensued, because I had less than 8 minutes before I HAD TO log out at that point. So I grabbed the one glowie in the room I'd cleared and then started racing backwards to find the other glowies ... dragging aggro along behind me as I flew along the ceiling while searching. The first glowie had 2 spawn groups camping it, and while I was destroying them, the aggro train I'd gathered caught up to me so I had a mess of annoyed $Targets to destroy before I could click the glowie. So I spent a couple minutes blasting them until I could click the glowie without being attacked. Then I had to find the other 2 glowies, and I had less than 4 minutes left. So I raced along the ceiling again, dragging along a train of aggro behind me as I passed until I found the next glowie, except this time I'd managed to scoop up about 5 spawn groups who were all unhappy with me, and it was going to take more time than I had left to deal with them. And it was at that point I got an idea. I deliberately lead the pile of aggro away from the glowie, got them nicely clustered up under me ... and used Dimension Shift on like 20 of them and got them all in the AoE. That then let me fly out of the AoE over to the glowie, click it (while all the aggro was Dimension Shifted out of phase to me) and then fly off to try and find the last glowie. However, I was half down on HP at this point and needed to wait for my Temporal Mending to recharge, plus I was close to the Mission Door entrance ... so I flew to the entrance, left the building (to drop all aggro), entered the Mission Door and the location of the last glowie was marked on the map for me. Less than 2 minutes to go before the Day Job demands my time. Fly along the ceiling again, dragging aggro behind me ... maneuver pile of aggro into a spot away from the glowie ... Dimension Shift the pile and then leave the Dimension Shift to go click the glowie. Mission Complete. Exit. Pocket D Teleport. Move to Base Portal. Exit Game. ... just made it. Without Dimension Shift, I wouldn't have been able to pull that off in that amount of time. Gravity Distortion Field would have taken too long to recharge (and might have not hit everything) in the time frame I had to use it in. So, definitely an edge case situation ... but for being able to click a glowie without continuing to be attacked ... only Dimension Shift will do for that when Line of Sight cannot be blocked. Anyway, I just wanted to share that bit of tactical jiggery pokery brought on by the need to finish a timed mission involving a Defeat Boss & Crew plus click 4 glowies in about 10 minutes while playing at Level 18 which was only made possible because I had Dimension Shift.
  3. Yeah yeah, patience! How long will that take!?
  4. Serum Buff Mercenary +DMG, +RES(All except Psionic), +To Hit, +Recovery You can use a special Serum to turn one Mercenary into a virtually Unstoppable killing machine for a short time. Once the Mercenary is injected with this Serum, his Damage, chance to hit, Endurance Recovery, and Damage Resistance to all damage except Psionics, will be greatly increased. The target Mercenary will also be virtually immune to controlling effects including Disorient, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize and Knockback. After the Serum wears off, the Mercenary will be exhausted and drained of all Endurance and be unable to recover endurance for a short while. Recharge: Very Long Level 18 Type Click PvE damage scale 0.000000 Accuracy 1 Modes required Modes disallowed Disable_All Range 100 feet Activate period - Interrupt time - Cast time 1.3 seconds Recharge time 1000 seconds Endurance cost 13 Attack types Effect area Character Radius - Arc - Max targets hit - Entities affected MyPet Entities autohit MyPet Target MyPet Target visibility None Nofity Mobs Always Target: +52.5% Res(All but Psionic) for 60s If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) +100% Recovery for 60s If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) -100 Knockup, Knockback for 60s If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) +1000% Res(Knockup, Knockback, Repel) for 60s If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) -10 Repel for 60s If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) -12.975 Stunned, Held, Sleep, Immobilized for 60s If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) +7.5% ToHit for 60s If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) +7.5% Dmg(Smashing, Lethal, Fire) for 60s If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) -1000% Recovery for 20s (after 60 second delay) If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) -100% Endurance (after 60 second delay) If target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Soldier) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Medic) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Spec_Ops) or target.VillainName(MastermindPets_Commando) The Serum power suffers from two fatal flaws of negligent game design. Affects only 1 Mercenary at a time. Ridiculously terrible uptime (60s out of 1000s base is a miserly 6%!!!) The first problem is blunt force trauma to the face stupidly simple. Change Serum from being a Ranged single target buff to being a 60ft PBAoE around the Mastermind. So instead of Serum being a single target buff, it buffs all of your Mercenaries simultaneously. It really doesn't get any simpler than that. As for the STUPIDLY LONG RECHARGE ... even that can be fixed pretty easily by lowering the recharge from 1000 seconds (obnoxiously ridiculous!) down to 300 seconds. Only other thing I'd want to do to the power to fix past bad game design decisions would be to delete the Recovery debuff for 20s while keeping the Endurance crash the power causes after 60s. That way the "crash" after 60s would cause a "fallback" to low endurance attacks, but would not "switch off" the affected Mercenaries (plural) for 20 seconds while their Recovery is debuffed into the ground and held there. I'm thinking that is would be really a good idea to make Serum come with a serious Regeneration buff for the 60 second duration, so the Mercenaries don't need as much healing for the duration (see: Supersoldiers). Of course, adding that factor would then mean adding Healing enhancements and Healing sets (but not Accurate Healing sets). But in terms of simple solutions to the Serum Is TERRIBLE!!™ problem ... changing it to a Supremacy radius PBAoE and lowering the base recharge to 300s would do a LOT to rehabilitate the reputation of Serum (which has ALWAYS been bad!). Deleting the Recovery "crash" while keeping the Endurance "crash" after 60s would also make the power NOT TERRIBLE anymore. Other wishful thinking checkboxes would be to increase the +ToHit and +Damage buffs for the 60s duration so they aren't quite so ... anemic. +7.5% for a 1000s recharge on a 60s duration? Seriously?!?!? These are supposed to be Super Soldiers! Not Super STUPID Soldiers!
  5. Archetype Blaster Archery builds Assault Rifle builds Beam Rifle builds Dark Blast builds Dual Pistols builds Electrical Blast builds Energy Blast builds Fire Blast builds Ice Blast builds Psychic Blast builds Radiation Blast builds Sonic Attack builds Water Blast builds Brute Like that you mean?
  6. I can already say that this won't happen if it keeps the current slotting capabilities it has; specifically Knockback and the ability to slot FF+Rech proc. It'd be far too easy to spam for absolutely no other reason than to proc-check for 100% bump every five seconds. And yes, I would absolutely do it. In fact I did do it, just to see, and as it currently resides in the game I can sit there and spam Trip Mine at 5/s intervals and end up with just a bit over 40 Trip Mines in one pile. Unfortunately (or I guess fortunately for the Devs) the psuedo pet that gets dropped doesn't carry over damage procs so my dreams of decking an AV for 15,000 damage isn't going to happen. C'est la vie. So there's a thing that you can do with Trip Mines ... IN GAME ... RIGHT NOW ... and you already HAVE DONE IT ... so it's already an existing feature of how the power works and how the power can be slotted ... /em significant look ... because that already exists and can be done and you've already done it ... you're saying that any changes to Trip Mines that DO NOT remove the capability that already exists and that you've already exploited and would continue to exploit after any changes(!!) means that the proposed changes cannot be accepted because the proposed changes do not PREVENT this already existing feature from being exploited by you if the proposed changes are made. /em next significant look So what you're demanding is that Knockback enhancement slotting be removed from Trip Mines in order to prevent the exploit that you've found, have used, and will continue to use, so long as the exploit exists. To be extremely specific, you want to ensure that the Force Feedback proc can't be slotted into Trip Mines ... and you're trying to say that the changes I've proposed (and I quote) ... "won't happen if it keeps the current slotting capabilities" ... (unquote) due to an exploit that has nothing to do with the changes I'm proposing. @Sir Myshkin it would have been more honest of you to say that in your opinion Knockback enhancement (and sets) need to be disabled on Trip Mines so as to prevent the "clever use of game mechanics" that you've found, have used, and will continue to use until it is removed from the game. That's a separate issue(!) from the changes I was proposing ... and you know it.
  7. Traps is more of a Plant The Flag/pitch a pup tent kind of a powerset. It's great at static battles and suffers when it needs to stay on the move. In other words ... great for campers.
  8. This is a somewhat common fallacy that crops up sometimes, thinking that all you have to do is nerf base damage instead of nerfing enhancements via Schedule switching. Here, let me show you what I mean. Let's say for the sake of argument and illustration purposes that an AoE power (conveniently) does 100 damage ... just to keep the math simple and obvious. Let's also say that we're going to ignore ED for the moment and talk about damage enhancement in terms of +100% for Schedule A and +60% for Schedule B (3x SO worth). Schedule A (no enhancement): 100 damage Schedule A (+100% damage): 200 damage Schedule B (+60% damage): 160 damage So what happens if you nerf the base damage instead of shifting the enhancement Schedule to achieve the same outcome as the shift to Schedule B? Schedule A (nerfed, no enhancement): 80 damage Schedule A (nerfed, +100% damage): 160 damage So what do you get out of that? 100-200 damage 100-160 damage 80-160 damage By shifting to Schedule B, you retain the minimum but nerf the maximum ... which is the intended result here. By keeping Schedule A and nerfing the base damage, you nerf the minimum AND the maximum ... which is an UNintended side effect, since the lower minimum will punish builds that aren't slotted yet or can't afford slots in a way that is not desired or useful/advantageous to our purposes. Only by shifting to Schedule B in order to nerf only the maximum performance while holding the minimum performance harmless is the desired outcome achieved. Builds that haven't been fully slotted yet shouldn't have to be "punished by the backswing" of the nerfbat that really ought to be aimed at lowering only maximum performance (in this context). Hope that helps you understand why I was structuring my suggestion/proposal THAT way rather than the alternative of an (indiscriminate) across the board nerf that hits everything. To put it mildly, ever since playing Diablo II and writing the Speedazon Guide (20 years ago now) I've been very sensitive to the differences that can result from buffing/nerfing minimums and maximums of performance independently of each other.
  9. You're reaching for the wrong tool. What you want is a collection of alternative items to be summoned by ... Propel ... and you simply choose the alternative set of items summoned at the Costume Editor.
  10. The inherent problem with giving Trip Mines a range above 0ft is that you then require the Player to specify the location of where the Trip Mine is going to be summoned. Now, granted ... here on Homecoming that's less of a problem than it would be 8 years ago thanks to the Target Location bind that has been enabled. But still, it's an extra layer of complication in controlling where the Trip Mine gets "thrown" to, rather than dropping at the caster's feet ... and that distance is going to require an animation of the caster (for the "throw") which in turn ought to require Immobilizing the caster (just like every other attack power). I would prefer to enable use of Trip Mines without requiring an Immobilize while casting so as to enable a strategy of laying Trip Mines while kiting an NPC (or several) who are chasing the caster. You can't achieve that kind of "explosive trail of breadcrumbs" while on the run if use of Trip Mines requires an animation that will Immobilize the caster for the duration (during which pursuers can close the gap). Now, granted, doing that successfully may require making more than one lap around a space in order to give enough time for the Trip Mines to arm themselves behind the caster before a $Target can step on an armed Trip Mine ... but that's something you can't do, tactically, if there's an Immobilize to cast factor.
  11. Enflame. It's not that they ignore their own damage, but rather clever timing of what happens when in a sequencing.
  12. With the right colors, you could turn Water Blast into Vomit Blast ...
  13. Defender Traps Lvl Acc Dmg Act Int Cast Rch End Rng Radius Arc Area Web Grenade 1 1 - - - 1.37s 4s 7.8 70ft - - Character Caltrops 1 1 - - - 1.07s 45s 7.8 25ft - - Location Triage Beacon 2 1 - - - 2.77s 200s 13 - - - Character Acid Mortar 6 1 - - - 2.77s 90s 13 - - - Character Force Field Generator 8 1 - - - 2.03s 15s 13 20ft - - Location Poison Trap 12 1 - - - 2.77s 90s 13 - - - Character Seeker Drones 18 1 - - - 2.03s 90s 15.6 60ft - - Location Trip Mine 26 1 - - 4s 5s 20s 13 - - - Character Time Bomb 32 1 - - 8s 9s 360s 26 - - - Character Mastermind Traps Lvl Acc Dmg Act Int Cast Rch End Rng Radius Arc Area Web Grenade 1 1 - - - 1.37s 4s 9.75 70ft - - Character Caltrops 2 1 - - - 1.07s 45s 9.75 25ft - - Location Triage Beacon 4 1 - - - 2.77s 200s 13 - - - Character Acid Mortar 10 1 - - - 2.77s 90s 16.25 - - - Character Force Field Generator 16 1 - - - 2.03s 15s 16.25 20ft - - Location Poison Trap 20 1 - - - 2.77s 90s 16.25 - - - Character Seeker Drones 28 1 - - - 2.03s 90s 19.5 60ft - - Location Trip Mine 35 1 - - 4s 5s 20s 16.25 - - - Character Detonator 38 1 - - - 2.03s 600s 32.5 100ft - - Character Recommendations for changes below. T1 Web Grenade Change from Ranged (single target) to be a spherical Target AoE with a 7ft radius (basically melee radius around $Target) with a Max Targets of 5. Note that such a change would be under 1/2 the 15ft radius of Web Envelope for Soldiers of Arachnos as well as 1/2 the Max Targets. 72 / 152 = 49 / 225 = 0.218 At 1/5th the area of effect in square feet, the 4s recharge of Web Grenade (Traps) is justified relative to the 20s recharge of Web Envelope (Soldier Mace Mastery). At 1/2 the max targets, the differential between a Level 1/Tier 1 primary/secondary power and a Level 35+/Tier 2 Mace Mastery power is also justified. All other power parameters remain unchanged. T2 Caltrops Change recharge and duration (both) from 45 seconds to 30 seconds. This change is intended to help Caltrops be "more mobile" (in that it can be cast more often in new locations). Uptime remains unchanged. 30 seconds of duration on Caltrops will still be double the duration of "rain" AoE powers such as Sleet and Rain of Fire. All other power parameters remain unchanged. Recommend this adjustment to the Caltrops power be ported to ALL powersets that use Caltrops (including Ninja Jounin pets). T3 Triage Beacon Change from Click static pet summoning power to instead be a Toggle spherical PBAoE power so as to make the effect "mobile" as well as "sticky" to the caster. This change is intended to prevent Triage Beacon from being something that is summoned and then quickly left behind, unable to follow the caster. Make it look like one of these ... ... except with green laser light beams coming out of it instead of blue or red. Intent is to make main power parameters remain (relatively) unchanged. T4 Acid Mortar No changes recommended. T5 Force Field Generator (Wishful thinking) ... Grant Force Field Drone a movement speed buff when pet's powers are affecting only self (1 Target) because no allies are within radius range of aura buffs. Change is intended to help Force Field Generator "catch up" faster when it gets left behind (and is thus not buffing anyone other than itself). Recommend this adjustment to the Force Field Drone power be ported to ALL powersets that use Force Field Drone. T6 Poison Trap No changes recommended. T7 Seeker Drones Change recharge time from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Change duration of summoned Seeker Drones from 240 seconds to 120 seconds. Change chance for Disorient into a 100% chance for Knockup. Disable Stun enhancement slotting and enable Knockback enhancement slotting. Change is intended to make Seeker Drones more "relevant and available" as alpha strike attacks, particularly from Stealth. Unreliable Stun effect is less useful than a Knockup under most circumstances. Recommend this adjustment to the Seeker Drones power be ported to ALL powersets that use Seeker Drones. T8 Trip Mine Remove Interrupt Time from power. Disable Interrupt Time enhancement slotting. Change power Activation time from 5 seconds to 0 seconds(!) following the precedent of Hail of Bullets (Dual Pistols). Trip Mines are "summoned" in zero time and manifest at the feet of the caster, but take 5 seconds to arm themselves(!) before they can activate for self-destruction. Casting Trip Mines does not Immobilize the caster. The Trip Mine is simply "dropped" in place at the caster's location and begins to arm itself automatically. Crouching animation for Trip Mines deployment is removed. The summoned Trip Mine however retains its activation animation to indicate when it is ready to attack. Changes are intended to make Trip Mine a "drop on the run" power which can still be used for Toe Bombing™, in addition to creating minefields behind the caster's movements. The point and purpose of this change is to free up the caster from the burden of spending FIVE SECONDS(!) of casting time per Trip Mines deployment without altering the delay after casting before the Trip Mines are "armed and ready" to detonate. Recommend this adjustment to the Trip Mines power be ported to ALL powersets that use Trip Mines (I'm looking at you, Devices powerset!). T9 Time Bomb Change power from STUPIDLY LONG ACTIVATION (9 seconds?!? really?!?!?) to instead be a quick crouch and stand (I'm thinking no more than 3 seconds with a 1 second Interrupt) to summon Time Bomb pet. Change power from a Click that detonates on a preset delay timer to instead be a Toggle. Toggle power ON to deploy Time Bomb at caster's location. Toggle power OFF to detonate Time Bomb ON COMMAND. Change recharge from STUPIDLY LONG 360 seconds to instead be only 60 seconds, which of course cannot begin until Toggle OFF which detonates the previous deployment. Changes intended to make Time Bomb a power actually worth taking and using ... rather than being a power that defines Joke Character ... and practically by definition is more trouble than it is worth to use (let alone enhance) in its legacy (since Issue 0!) configuration. Recommend this adjustment to the Time Bomb power be ported to ALL powersets that use Time Bomb (I'm looking at you, Devices powerset!). T9 Detonator Reduce recharge time from STUPIDLY LONG 600 seconds (!!!) to only 60 seconds. Change intended to make Detonator a power actually worth taking and using. All other power parameters remain unchanged. OPTIONAL (!) Change Detonator from affecting only a single Pet to instead affecting all of the caster's Pets within a 10ft radius of the $Target selected Pet when Detonator is used. Optional change enables multiple Detonators to be triggered, rather than just one(!), depending on locations of Pets at the time that Detonator is cast/triggered. This then enables either single suicide bombings or mass suicide bombings by Pets at the Mastermind's discretion, simply by controlling the spacing/location of the respective Pets at their ... disposal. NOW we're talking REAL Mad Bomber Mastermind!
  14. Overly hasty typing. Meant the slotted enhancement values in Preventative Medicine, not the global buffs from outside the power.
  15. We make every pretense of competency around here ... 😎 Hold for 0.25s before Sleep effect. Confuse for 0.25s before Fear effect. Works for me. If there needs to be a slight overlap in order to protect against server timing wonkiness (just to be sure) ... could do it this way: Mesmerize Damage Hold for 0.3s (unresistable, unenhanceable) Sleep for duration after 0.2s Terrify Damage Confuse for 0.3s (unresistable, unenhanceable) Fear for duration after 0.2s So basically make the "neutralizer" factor last for the first 0.3s and have the Sleep/Fear start at 0.2s after the damage (instead of 0.25s) ... which is a difference that I honestly don't think anyone will notice the shift aside from the lack of retribution to the Mind Controller.
  16. Ain't broke, don't fix it. Can't fix it, so leave it broken.
  17. I take this as proof that it's possible for Players to learn the maps.
  18. Think I've got a solution. 0.00 to 0.25s: Damage ... and Hold (unresistable! unenhanceable!) ... for 0.25s 0.25s onwards: Sleep duration Basically do a 1/4 second Hold effect to prevent the retaliation shot and then end the Hold so as to let the Sleep take over. Could do the same thing for Terrify, because it has the same timing issue, as Mesmerize. Would be a relatively simple tweak to implement.
  19. On Virtue, I was playing my Warshade on a Dr. Quarterfield TF attended by The Man Himself™ ... Dechs Kaison ... and he was playing the "actual" Dechs Kaison character (a Robots Mastermind). At the time, my Warshade build wasn't even "properly finished" after having done a respec, so I had some empty slots(!) and wasn't up to full power ... but I wanted to play the TF (and get all those lovely merits!) so as to finish out my build with the proceeds. So I'm playing my incomplete and therefore slightly gimped Tri-form Warshade and then during one of the Defeat 150 Hunts a collection of us gather up a pile of Rularuu and nuke them down and I swoop into the mound of corpses, shift to Human form to use Stygian Circle and let rip with my $Battlecry ... Your soul is my chewtoy!! And the very next comment in Team chat is from Dechs Kaison saying, "MFing WS indeed..." Another one, on Virtue again, was the time I joined a Tanker Tuesday with my Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker and warned the 7 other Tankers on the team that my build "inhales aggro like a wind tunnel" ... which got the expected "yeah, right" responses from jaded Tankers who were not inclined to believe my warning (they thought I was just boasting). We choose to run an ITF ... and then for the entirety of every mission of the Task Force ... ALL OF THE AGGRO WAS MINE. The other Tankers on the team simply couldn't believe what they were seeing. They were Tankers ... and they couldn't get any aggro! A couple times, one of the other Tankers would peel off and try to aggro a second group ... and I would just throw a Taunt at that other group and they would IGNORE the Tanker who tried to get their attention and come bumrushing over to me and my dogpile. When it kept happening, the other Tankers "learned" that I HADN'T been boasting about "inhaling aggro like a wind tunnel" with my build and they basically had to revert to Scrapperlock Mode around me while I kept ALL THE AGGRO. What surprised them even more was just how ... aggressively ... I was playing, since Ice/Ice on a Tanker doesn't have a Rage crash, but DOES have a defensive "crash" if Energy Absorption isn't kept fed from fresh (live) bodies. So the pacing that I was setting through this ITF was more like that of a steamrolling Brute than a Tanker, and I was very nearly indestructible while everyone else was left grasping at straws for any aggro at all (I let them have NONE). At the end of the run, there was a near unanimous agreement that my Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker was the MVP of the run, that we'd completed the ITF faster than they'd been thinking it would (or even ought to) have been run because of my need to stay ahead of the Energy Absorption recharge cycles (and stay "fueled" with endurance and defense buffing), and that none of them had EVER seen anything like the kind of performance I'd been able to put on during that run. Some of them even admitted to crying about not being able to get any aggro at all during the entire run, and how that was eye opening for them! Good times. 😎 Another incident, still on Virtue, was on a Moonfire Task Force where I showed up with my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender. Some of the other Players made somewhat elitist comments about how they wouldn't mind "carrying me" through the Task Force since I couldn't really do any REAL damage with my build or anything. I just politely let them hang their ignorance out where everyone could see it while we waited for the team roster to fill up. The Task Force got started and almost immediately it was kind of obvious that the front line melee monsters were having trouble absorbing all of the incoming aggro in the tightly confined spaces we were breaking into in each of the radar stations. People were getting frustrated, and I could see where they dynamics were going (people were wanting to quit) so I asked before the 3rd mission if people would object if *I* "took the safeties off" what I was doing and made everyone's lives a lot easier? There was, of course, some more mocking derision thrown my way (after all, I was a Defender ... what could I do to change the battlefield dynamics?), but the consensus was to let me give it a go and see if we could run more smoothly (with fewer defeats and trouble). You can, of course, guess what happened next. I toggled on HERDicane (fully slotted up) and proceeded to -ToHit debuff everything into the ground while herding them into groups for the melee monsters to massacre without remorse, pity or a whole lot of need for healing support. Needless to say, at that point my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender basically "took over" the rest of the Task Force and became the central focus that protected everyone else while they all did their thing from within the safety of my HERDicane aura. Before we even got to the last missions, I was starting to get tells and team chats asking me what my build was because people had never seen anything like it before, and now they were getting inspired by seeing just how DOMINANT it was in action to want to play a copy of it themselves. I was even getting such requests from a couple of the melee monsters who had mocked my Defender before the Task Force began who had been insinuating they would have to "carry me" and here I was "carrying" the entire team for them (because they'd demonstrated that they couldn't manage aggro more than once). The bittersweet irony of that experience was that I'd rolled up that Storm/DP Defender only a couple of weeks before Time Manipulation was announced ... and as anyone who follows my build posts knows, here on Homecoming I've made a Time/Dual Pistols Defender build, but not a repeat of the Storm/Dual Pistols build, because (in my opinion) Time/Dual Pistols is better than Storm/Dual Pistols as a pairing on a Defender. Yet another incident, which happened on Virtue again, was when I was playing my Hunts(wo)man on a Task Force and we has a Force Field character in the group. I sent a tell to the Force Fielder saying that the two of us should stick together, because between us we'd defense cap everyone around us (including ourselves) and if anyone got too far out in front of our protective auras, that's THEIR problem. The Force Fielder readily agreed to my proposal, so the two of us stuck together and everyone who stayed near us had NO PROBLEMS. A couple of the melee monsters got a little too ambitious/adventurous and got too far out in front of us, promptly faceplanted when they weren't within range of our protection, complained that we weren't supporting them adequately ... and got resoundingly mocked by everyone else on the team for going off on their own and paying the price when they should have known better. Since everyone else was fine and they only hurt themselves by getting too far out over their skis, the consensus was there was no need to change what we were doing and the melee monsters just had to settle for going at our pace instead of at theirs (because we held all the support that kept them alive). However, we also had an Empathy Defender on the team. Once the Force Fielder and I teamed up, that basically left the Empath with next to nothing to do, since they were playing as a healbot and reserving all of their endurance and animation time to twitch reaction healing ... that "suddenly" wasn't needed anymore, because everyone nearby to the Force Fielder and my Hunts(wo)man Soldier of Arachnos weren't taking much (if any) damage anymore. So the Empath was just following us, with nothing to do. So after we got to the next mission, I told the Empath in team chat to feel free to start offending at any time. The Empath just stopped moving. Stopped. I figured they were trying to process what I'd said and compose a response, so I stopped advancing (which also made the Force Fielder stop advancing too) in order to give the Empath time to type their response without leaving them behind (unprotected). The answer from the Empath was ... "What did you just say to me?" To which I replied that they may be a DEFender, but they also had a secondary powerset and given how the team was running there was no reason they couldn't start OFFending while they were with us using their secondary. There was another pause ... longer this time ... while I waited for answer. Finally, after a long delay, the Empath replied in team chat ... "That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me." And from then on, for the rest of the Task Force, the three of us (myself, the Force Fielder and the Empathy Defender) were practically inseparable. Our Empath stopped "flying the gauges" as a healbot and started using their secondary powerset on anything and everything that came into range. The entire team noticed the increase in tempo and pacing and everyone was a lot happier as a result. Our Empath started "painting the town red" with contributions to our XP generation ... and was loving every second of it. At the end of the run, the Empath sent me a tell saying that they had never before enjoyed a teaming experience as much as they had on that team, and they were inspired to keep playing their Empath even more now than they had been before. And all it took was telling a Defender they didn't need to stay in their pigeonhole as a healbot. Defenders have a secondary. And they should feel free to use it. You may be an Empathy primary ... but you can be MORE than just your primary. Feel free to start offending at any time. "That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me." And that was my turn to be the one saying something nice to someone that got them to play their character better in a team, to the benefit of everyone. And yes, receiving is pretty nice ... but so is the giving, when you can do it.
  20. It Depends ... It depends on the entirety of the build. You can't just take things in isolation in an attempt to "Take All The Bestest Things" and just throw them together an automatically wind up with the Bestest Integration™ of everything together. Classic example of optimal components with sub-optimal systems integration is something that was done on a Soviet era satellite design. They had a fantastic infrared sensor that they put on the satellite. They had a fantastic heat sink that they put on the satellite. Guess where they put them on the satellite? Right ... they put them right next to each other ... so that the fantastic heat sink contaminated the results of the fantastic sensor, rendering the data from the sensor objectively terrible. What that means is that you need to go to the extra step/layer of checking your work for the assembly of animation times and recharge times so as to see how they all "fit" together (tetris style) without gaps and how "efficiently" they fit together. It's something that I've been trying to do on my more recent build posts (once I figured out a process for doing so). Because it's not enough to just have "All The Bestest Things" in the build planner if those "All The Bestest Things" do not fit together (neatly or well) resulting in a lot of waste/inefficiency despite all being individually "All The Bestest Things" as per the build planner. As I have found, I often times need to do multiple revisions on builds in order to "test out" various tweaks and alternatives to the build plan and then cross-check that against the animation times of various attack chain sequences to make sure everything "fits" together efficiently without "wasted" unnecessarily excessive recharge that serves no useful purpose. And yes, a 20s base recharge time sound like a minor eternity for an attack chain ... but once you pile on all the global recharge and start getting the power recharge down under 10s, you can start getting some really good results. I mean, when you add up 71.25% global recharge from set bonuses, plus 70% recharge from Hasten and 50% recharge from Chrono Shift ... that's 191.25% recharge affecting every power in the build even without any recharge slotted into a power itself and from a 20s base recharge that means that Suppressive Fire recharges in ... 6.87 seconds. Let me repeat that to make it really really obvious. 20 second base recharge 191.25% total global recharge bonus 6.87 second functional recharge Powers that recharge in under 7 seconds can be put into an attack chain pretty easily ... which I detailed in my previous posts in this very thread. And when you stack the animation time for Suppressive Fire on top of the less than 7 second recharge time you get an attack chain cycle time of less than 10 seconds per repeat ... which is "useful" in a variety of knock on ways, particularly if the duration of any debuffs/mez effects are 20s or higher because you can potentially double stack them within 10 seconds of starting your attack chain, which can then sustain that debuff/mez effect nigh indefinitely while the rest of your attacks in the chain defeat the $Target(s) you're attacking. And that's before you factor being able to stack the Hold of a Cryo/Incendiary/Toxic Suppressive Fire attack with a Time Stop to neutralize $Targets, particularly if you're wanting to spread the suppression around beyond a single $Target in the dogpile. In other words, you have options of engagement in relative safety that you wouldn't have by dropping Suppressive Fire and/or Time Stop. This isn't a matter of what are "All The Bestest Things" ... it's a matter of HOW do you use the tools you give yourself ... which is a very different level of thinking about your build and your gameplay strategies and tactics.
  21. Oh ... but it isn't as a proc monster ... Level 20: Suppressive Fire (A) HamiO: Endoplasm Exposure (+2 Acc/Mez) (21) Gladiator's Javelin - Chance of Damage(Toxic): Level 10 (21) Gladiator's Net - Chance of Damage(Lethal): Level 10 (23) Neuronic Shutdown - Chance of Damage(Psionic): Level 10 (23) Ghost Widow's Embrace - Chance of Damage(Psionic): Level 20 (25) Decimation - Chance of Build Up: Level 25 Suppressive Fire: Gladiator's Javelin (3.5 PPM), Gladiator's Net (3.5 PPM), Neuronic Shutdown (3.5 PPM), Ghost Widow's Embrace (3.5 PPM), Unbreakable Constraint (4.5 PPM), Apocalypse (4.5 PPM), Decimation (1.0 PPM) 3.5 * ((20 / ( 1 + 0 / 100 )) + 1.67) / (60 * (0.25 + 0.75 * (1 + 0 * (11 * 0 + 540) / 30,000))) = 90% (Pre-clamp: 126.41%) 4.5 * ((20 / ( 1 + 0 / 100 )) + 1.67) / (60 * (0.25 + 0.75 * (1 + 0 * (11 * 0 + 540) / 30,000))) = 90% (Pre-clamp: 162.53%) 1.0 * ((20 / ( 1 + 0 / 100 )) + 1.67) / (60 * (0.25 + 0.75 * (1 + 0 * (11 * 0 + 540) / 30,000))) = 36.12% 71.75 * 4 * 0.9 = ~258.3 average proc damage (71.75 + 107.1) * 2 * 0.9 = ~321.93 average proc damage The ~258.3 is without Superior/Purple 50 ... and the ~321.93 is with Superior/Purple 50 ... averaging the 90% proc chances into things. The Decimation Build Up proc though is what can really act as a force multiplier for the AoE attacks of Empty Clips and Bullet Rain, since it buffs the damage dealt to every $Target hit after a Decimation proc. It's one of those 1-2 combos that you have to experience first hand in order to appreciate it.
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