Redlynne

Trickshooter ... when handed a lemonade, you need to stop trying to make lemons out of it. I'm well aware of the fact that Sleep is not inherently immune to aggro. I've played a Mind Controller who used Mass Hypnosis and was always amazed by seeing foes affected by Sleep aggro onto my character WHILE ASLEEP just from mere proximity if I moved through them after putting them all to sleep. The reason why that happened was because Sleep in and of itself does not debuff Perception ... meaning that Perception was not "impaired" while mezzed with Sleep from Mass Hypnosis. Last time I checked ... Flash Arrow debuffs Perception by -90% for 60 seconds (on a Defender, other ATs will have different specifics). What happens when you combine Sleep with Perception debuffing? The combo isn't "immune" to aggro ... but it sure does help with letting you solo spawn groups 1 at a time! If you can Sleep+Perception debuff from Flash Arrow you can "neutralize" a spawn group and then pull individual $Targets out of it one at time while keeping the rest in Sleep and with the Perception debuffing you might not even get aggro from all of them all at once (unless if they're too close together for the Perception debuff to prevent their aggro shout). Is it a "perfect" solution? No. Is it a "good enough" solution? For soloing ... it's fantastic. In groups, the Sleep will no doubt be broken easily by stray (read: AoE) damage thrown into the mix, but that's fine. Being able to use Flash Arrow to "defer" aggro from a spawn group when soloing so as to be able to defeat them sequentially, rather than in parallel, would seem to be a somewhat worthwhile upgrade to the power in terms of usefulness. Do you disagree? Doing no damage helps with that ... Then start thinking creatively already! Here ... I'll start. 3s Sleep (mag 1) 6s Sleep (mag 1) 9s Sleep (mag 1) 12s Sleep (mag 1) 15s Sleep (mag 1) This means: A +0 Underling will Sleep for 15 sec A +0 Minion will Sleep for 12 sec A +0 Lieutenant will Sleep for 9 sec A +0 Boss will Sleep for 6 sec A +4 Boss will Sleep for 3 sec Why? MAG stacking and how long the MAG stacks remain "deep" enough for the Sleep to affect the $Targets. Now, we can always quibble over how long the Sleep effect durations ought to be, what MAG they ought to have, how many of them ought to be allowed to stack per use of the power ... in other words the details are open to negotiation ... but I wanted to present you with an option that shows that there are possibilities for original thinking here that you seem to have been dismissing out of hand. By the way, I looked at ... Entangling Arrow for Controllers and I don't see any Overpower effect built into the power. Flash Arrow for Controllers and I don't see any Overpower effect built into the power. Glue Arrow for Controllers and I don't see any Overpower effect built into the power. Ice Arrow for Controllers and I don't see any Overpower effect built into the power. Poison Gas Arrow for Controllers and I don't see any Overpower effect built into the power. Acid Arrow for Controllers and I don't see any Overpower effect built into the power. Disruption Arrow for Controllers and I don't see any Overpower effect built into the power. Oil Slick Arrow for Controllers and I don't see any Overpower effect built into the power. EMP Arrow for Controllers and I don't any Overpower effect built into the power that's unique to Controllers. So when you say that it's "inherently better for Controllers" to have Trick Arrow powers that incorporate control effects in them, that's only true in the sense that Controllers have other powers those controls can be stacked with ... but last I checked there isn't a tremendous amount of advantage to Controllers over other Archetypes by giving Flash Arrow the kind of "MAG decay" behavior I've outlined above for a Sleep, since unlike a Hold or an Immobilize or a Stun, Sleep can be broken. At best you can argue that a Sleep power sets up Containment for a damaging mez power that does Hold or Immobilize or Stun (or whatever) for a Controller, but at best that's a ONE AND DONE advantage there where the Controller would only gain the advantage on the first hit (and a lot of $Targets require more than one hit, so...). In other words, the "inherently better for Controllers" point is marginal AT BEST in my personal opinion, depending on how you structure the Sleep effect proposed for Flash Arrow (see example above).

Kind of begs the question about how Placate ACTUALLY functions. If Placate cast by a Foe causes only that Foe to be removed from the Threat list ... might that mean that Placate cast ON SELF could perhaps remove EVERY FOE from the Threat list? It's the latter functionality (wiping the entire Threat list, not just the caster from the Threat list) that is the desired functionality. Alternatively, you could just add Sleep (which does not inherently draw aggro or create Threat) to Flash Arrow for a "fragile" sort of "stop attacking" type of use of the power (so not a Hold, but a Sleep). Borrow the visual FX of the Illusion Controller power Flash (which is a Hold) for the "I'm Blinded!" appearance of the power, rather than using any kind of slumped over "I'm Asleep!" visual indicator and you'd be good to go ...

That's what your secondary is for ... although I agree that Ninjas are absurdly weak on their native protection scheme. No it's not ... it works JUST FINE ... Learn 2 Build (to play) ... No thanks. 👎

That's because Praetoria isn't organized along the Good vs Evil axis like Paragon City and the Rogue Isles are. Praetoria is organized on a Law versus Chaos axis ... with the Loyalists being the Lawful alignment, and the Resistance being the disruptive Chaos alignment. This means that Loyalists and Resistance can be both good AND evil (simultaneously sometimes!) without having a contradiction in their motivations or perspectives. Good and Evil are simply means towards their respective ends of either Law or Chaos.

Defender doesn't offer "enough" of an advantage over Corruptor for Water. There's post elsewhere in the Defender forums explaining why, but my Search Fu is lazy at the moment. Nature however will definitely be advantaged by Defender over Corruptor. So the real question you need to ask yourself is ... which is more important to you? Nature Affinity ... or Water Blast? If Nature Affinity, then you want Defender. If Water Blast, then you want Corruptor.

I still recommend Ninja/Time/Mace ... It's A BOW Time for anyone who wants to play Ninjas (like, AT ALL). Time Manipulation is the "secret sauce" that Ninjas need in order to thrive.

/em facepalm 💣 Do THIS: Loyalist Resistance Loyalist Resistance Loyalist Resistance Or THIS: Resistance Loyalist Resistance Loyalist Resistance Loyalist Not THIS: Loyalist Loyalist Loyalist Loyalist Loyalist Loyalist And not THIS: Resistance Resistance Resistance Resistance Resistance Resistance

Not insane ... completely appropriate. Flash Arrow ought to be something you can use in the middle of combat for an effect, not just something you have to use before combat starts (and then once you've initiated combat most of the usefulness of Flash Arrow just falls by the wayside).

Care to provide directions on how to get there ...? 👀

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Moral_High_Ground You need to SWITCH LOYALTIES AT LEAST 5 TIMES. Picking the same loyalty 5 times in a row isn't going to cut it for you.

The whole targetcustom* system is completely, totally and utterly dependent upon cycling through what you can see through your camera. Which means ... stuff that's beyond your perception radius can't be selected for targeting (for what should be obvious reasons). The selection of $Targets via the targetcustom* system only cycles through what is visible on your screen. If it's not visible on screen, it can't be targeted. The key here is that the $Target must be visible to the camera (remember, 3rd person view independent of your avatar!) rather than requiring visibility from a 1st person view. This kind of thing is how you can "see around corners" using careful positioning and camera control to target things that are not within Line of Sight of your character. Anything that is NOT within the field of view of the camera cannot be targeted by targetcustom* because if the camera can't see it then you can't target it using targetcustom* ... not that difficult a concept. Um ... the wiki explicitly says that won't work ... and why. Works ... target_custom_next enemy alive void Fails ... target_custom_next enemy void alive Why? enemy is a constraining parameter alive is a constraining parameter void is the name of the enemy you want to target Parameter + Parameter + Name = works Parameter + Name + Parameter = does not work It's important to parse your modifiers in the correct order before naming what you're trying to target. That's why the invalid example was given to demonstrate so you didn't make that mistake. Show the class where the parameter "notalive" is a valid parameter to use. Here is the list of legal paramters and what they mean: Show us the "notalive" parameter in that list and you won't be assigned detention after class ...

Quoted For Emphasis.

The proc chances for Entangling Arrow might be low, but you can use Entangling Arrow A LOT if you aren't doing other things. The problem is, you almost certainly ARE going to want to be doing "other things" than just spamming Entangling Arrow all over the place. Having played both with and without the personal attacks as a Ninja Mastermind, the difference is basically one of these kinds of comparisons ... That's night versus the photosphere of our local star (also known as the nearest continuous fusion reactor), for those who aren't that interested in astronomy. 😎 The problem with using the Mastermind personal attacks in combination with Trick Arrow is going to be that they're ALL CLICKS. The Mastermind personal attacks using archery are all Clicks. Your Trick Arrow attacks are all Clicks. That's a problem since it means that you can only animate 1 Click at a time and so you've got all of these powers "competing" for animation time. Having played Ninja/Trick Arrow back on Virtue ... I STRENUOUSLY advise you against playing the combination, except as an indulgence into masochism. Your Ninjas will fold like cheap pre-creased origami rice paper if something even BREATHES in their general direction. The only strategy that will keep them alive is to PREVENT them from drawing aggro, which basically means Tankerminding in order to keep them alive. You're not going to have any Healing capabilities beyond Aid Other, and that is SO NOT GOING TO BE ENOUGH during combat that I hope you enjoy resummoning defeated Ninjas (and re-upgrading them). Pretty much the only way to play Ninja/Trick Arrow "successfully" when solo is to open with (an aggro-less) Flash Arrow and then try to single pull $Targets from range into the meatgrinder of your Ninjas. Use the personal attacks to whittle them down while your $Target(s) charge towards you so the Ninjas finish them off faster. The combination of Flash Arrow debuffing perception ought to make it "easier" to single pull $Targets so as to defeat them sequentially rather than in parallel when using your personal attacks since the archery personal attacks will often times produce a "smaller aggro shout" behavior which combined with the perception debuffing will make it more likely to pull single targets and pick apart spawn groups. The biggest danger to a Ninja/Trick Arrow build is ... numbers. It is VERY easy for you to get overrun when you pull too much aggro, which will defeat your Ninjas in next to no time flat and you'll be left with a Petless Mastermind and a secondary that can barely mez and lightly debuff whatever just devoured all of your Pets and is now trying to OM NOM NOM on your Mastermind. Sometimes you'll be able to disengage and retreat ... and other times you won't and will faceplant ... so play in a cowardly/cautious manner if you want to live longer than your Ninjas (and they won't last long, you'll be resummoning and re-equipping them A LOT!).

The more Defense and Resistance you can stack on your Mastermind, the better your Tankerminding will be. That's because incoming damage gets "filtered" through your Mastermind's Defenses and Resistances BEFORE it gets shared out to your Pets as unresistable damage to them. How that would be useful for a Tankermind is left as a take home exercise for the disinterested ...

@Cipher ... care to comment on this point? It would be nice to know that PK is wrong (or right) about this notion ... I can even envision a wrinkle/loophole in the perception of this ... in that the code work wouldn't be changing anything about THE GAME ... but rather only using the code for a resource external to the game itself (the build planner). You could even compartmentalize the dataset such that only @Cipher has direct access to the game code, while @The Philotic Knight only has access to an exported "copy" of the dataset relevant to the web effort, and the two of you coordinate on how to build the web page that makes the whole thing work as both a public facing "City Terminal" to view character database info outside the game AND as a build planner web page based application "outside" the game itself. That way, @The Philotic Knight isn't being given access to the actual game code to modify the code the game uses. Of course, all of that depends on the legal-ish-isms that the Homecoming team is operating under while negotiating with NC$oft, so interpretations are going to matter for this. I'm just thinking it would be a ... waste ... to throw away all of PK's efforts and enthusiasm for this so desperately needed toolset for Players that is at least a decade overdue by now ...

There's a reason for that. A refinement that you could do to this would be so either add a + modifier to both commands inside the macro, causing them to continue to activate while the macro is engaged ... or to add a ++ command to both of them causing the macro to automatically go into a continuous cycling until countermanded by clicking the macro again. The difference between these two modifiers is that the + condition only holds while the macro is clicked and held (kind of like movement keys), while the ++ condition is more like a toggle akin to autorun. The idea being that by adding a + to each action in the macro you can click and camera search while holding down the click on the macro and if a defeated friend is found then Vengeance gets cast on them. Using a ++ to each action in the macro would allow you to click, release and be in "scan mode" for any defeated friend and if found cast Vengeance upon them so you can look around with your camera until finding the defeated teammate (just remember to click again afterwards to disengage the ++ control for continued scanning. Alternatively, you could create a ... cascade ... of macros/binds/files that would basically cycle through your teammates "the hard way" and try to cast Vengeance on them each in turn. You'd basically be doing this: "teamselect 1$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 2$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 3$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 4$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 5$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 6$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 7$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 8$$powexecname Vengeance" What that does is select each teammate in turn and tries to cast Vengeance on them after selecting them. It will basically "fall through" each selection, attempting to cast Vengeance until getting to a teammate that Vengeance works on ... or you'll be left with the last teammate selected at the end of it. This formulation would not spin your PC to face the downed teammate unless you were casting Vengeance upon them. Only problem with this is the character limit for macros/keybinds (the above is 296 characters with "" added around it) which will probably exceed the length of a macro or keybind that you can do. So the answer to that problem is to just simply make 2 binds/macros and have one function call the other at the end (or have both of them function call each other so as to loop until you issue a different command to do something else). "teamselect 1$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 2$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 3$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 4$$powexecname Vengeance" "teamselect 5$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 6$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 7$$powexecname Vengeance$$teamselect 8$$powexecname Vengeance" You then just need to add the "wrap to next macro" function call at the end of the line inside the " at the end and you can click once to initiate both macros. Once Vengeance is cast, the cascade stops and the macro terminates. Note that you could even go so far as to create a cascade of THREE macros that would run through your teammates first before dropping down into the defeated friend notmypet as an ultimate fallback catchall option when playing on leagues so as to not be limited to only your team for use of Vengeance. The advantage of using teamselect in this context is that it doesn't require your teammate to be within camera view, simply that they be in the same zone as your PC.

Hence why multiple people are advocating that the two of you should be working together on this ...

You and @The Philotic Knight should REALLY start working together! https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/15210-pks-build-planner/

Ricochet ... ... the Better Twinshot from the mirror universe written far, far better ...

Pillar of Ice and Flame Flashback will let you do that already ... you just can't do it by starting in Praetoria.

Was always fun to stay in 1 spot and have like 6-10 stacks of Caltrops cast at you from different directions ... because the combination started looking an awful lot like a spiral armed galaxy of "stars" underneath you when you used Hover to get above them all.

The reason why it can stack is because each buff is not being cast by the same caster (for what ought to be obvious reasons). Request denied.

That one works because it's an interaction with a VERY controlled $Target. The permutations of possibility for how the interaction can go is VERY limited. That constraint disappears when dealing with a much larger set of variables ... such as ANY NPC $Target in the game, not just your own Demons. Try pulling off the same stunt on a Rularuu Overseer eyeball. We'll just start with "how's that supposed to work?" and stop right there. I can easily envision blending the 3 available Whip animations with another 5 available Pistol animations plus a Build Up styled animation in order to make a powerset. THAT would be something that could be done. It wouldn't require "new" development of animations at least. I believe the flame FX were done to conceal the hackery of what was going on underneath to get the animation right.

Also, the whips that are done in the Demons set are a spectacular hack job of animation and visual FX. The other problem is that you can't have an "interactive" animation of a PC doing things to an NPC which then feedback into the PC animation. This is the reason why there are no wrestling moves or grappling moves, because those require interaction (and inter-reaction) between the involved avatars. You can grapple when the avatars are roughly the same size, but not when you've got a 4ft to 10ft range of avatar sizes (not to mention Giant Monsters!). And lets be honest, most of what you'd want to be doing with a whip power is going to be somewhat interactive (think entangling a $Target in a Hold type power using a toggle that prevents other powers from activating until the Hold is toggled off) in some form or fashion. Given the limitations of the game engine (and the rendering system for animations) the best you're going to get is 9 different animations for lashing a $Target with a whip. You wind up with a melee (plus a little extra range for the "reach" of the whip) powerset that's a bit like War Mace (with "reach") but is mostly single target and might have Knockdowns as its secondary effect and ... not much else going for it ... which is a whole lot of work to make what would objectively speaking be a substandard smashing damage melee powerset (penalizing damage output for a little extra range to balance it all out). CAN it be done? With enough time, tools and tech manuals ... anything is possible. Would the effort be worth it? Paragon Studios considered the question and decided that no it would not be worth the effort. Cool? Sure. "Viable" in the way that Players measure such things ... not so much ...