Redlynne

Sounds like you want to Immobilize your $Target (Entangling Arrow?) and then "light 'em up!" with Enflame to determine how many damage ticks you get. That way you can ensure they aren't feared/running away from the damage they're receiving and all the pseudopets ought to be dropping on top of each other.

Some archetypes have a Target AoE ... while others have a Single Target. Scrappers get a Single Target Taunt. Tankers get a Target AoE Taunt. Everything else flows from there ...

Yeah, it was kind of "too cute by half" that the ONLY characters that died in that arc were Jack's. Felt like a giant middle finger slapping you in the face from Dr. Aeon. I remember back in the day when the episodes for the Who Will Die? arc were coming out and we got to episode 6 ... and people (myself included) just went NUTS over how STUPID the plot armor was on what happened. I mean ... seriously ... (bat)Manticore starring as THE MAN WITHOUT A PLAN ... who MURDERS his WIFE(!!!) because he ran out of Trick Arrows that can detoggle control powers? I mean ... come ON ... how narrow gauge is this railroad?? I just looked at the whole situation and setup and simply COULD NOT BELIEVE that Manticore was literally THAT DUMB to do what he both DIDN'T and DID do in that episode. You've got explosive arrows, moron. Why didn't you rig some of them around the altar to CRACK IT demolition charges style in case the thing went haywire? Oh ... right ... you're THE MAN WITHOUT A PLAN ... I forgot. Why didn't you use a Poison Gas Arrow on your WIFE(!!!) to put her to SLEEP instead of KILLING HER? Controllers have lousy mez protection you know. Oh ... right ... you're THE MAN WITHOUT A PLAN ... I forgot. Why didn't you use one of your Ice Arrows on your WIFE(!!!) to HOLD her instead of KILLING HER? Controllers have lousy mez protection you know. Oh ... right ... you're THE MAN WITHOUT A PLAN ... I forgot. Why didn't you use a Stunning Shot on your WIFE(!!!) that uses a BLUNT TIP to STUN HER rather than a POINTY ONE that would KILL HER? Controllers have lousy mez protection you know. Oh ... right ... you're THE MAN WITHOUT A PLAN ... I forgot. I could go on, but hopefully I've made my point. The writing was SO BAD that I literally lost all respect for Dr. Aeon as either the writer or as the creative force behind that entire arc of stories, thanks to Episode 6. I mean, basically the only way that Episode 6 has any excuse for being as awful as it is can be summed up in the old saying ... "Evil will always triumph, because Good is DUMB!!!!" ... and boy did Dr. Aeon go out of his way to cram that down everyone's throats with the literally unbelievable plan that killed off 3 major lore characters, with each death becoming more egregiously awful/bad/stupid than the last. Seriously ... Manticore ... all you had to do was MEZ your wife to detoggle her ... you didn't need to KILL her ... 👎 I blame the writer (Dr. Aeon) ... who apparently had an "agenda" ... common sense (and two brain cells being rubbed together) be damned. Yeah ... NOT a fan of the Signature Story Arcs. 👎

Well ... you did ask for it ... literally ... Proposal. Change Focus Chi from being a +Damage +ToHit Build Up clone into being ... a Grant Power: -Resistance debuff enabler for all your Martial Arts attack powers (which would prevent it from stacking, just like with Achilles' Heel debuffs). So instead of "doing more damage" because Focus Chi makes you do more damage ... instead ... you "do more damage" because Focus Chi makes $Targets you hit with Martial Arts attacks "vulnerable" to the damage you're doing to them. Just as a matter of eyeballing the situation, I'm thinking that a -50% Resistance debuff would probably throughput around the same damage scaling performance as a +100% damage buff under most circumstances (although there will be edge cases, of course). If necessary, limit the Resistance debuff to only debuffing Smashing Resistance (since Martial Arts attacks only do Smashing damage natively and require procs to add other damage types). The idea is to reach for similar outcomes via alternative means.

So ... a Shield Charge(-ish) attack power ... except you kick with a foot instead of whack with a shield ... and it's a single target attack still? Wouldn't mind turning Eagle's Claw into a "gap closer" attack that way ...

I still think it was pretty spiteful of Dr. Aeon (the Dev at Paragon Studios) to kill THREE of Jack Emmert's characters in the Who Will Die signature story arc, with the first death being a rather blatant Women In Refrigerators gratuity of (bad) writing. Dr. Aeon even got CALLED OUT for doing it at a Player Summit ... and it didn't change anything. I honestly found that more disrespectful (of Jack, of all people) than was either necessary or even called for. Since then I've never really felt any need to "pile on" Jack Emmert. His own former colleagues did worse to him (and his creations) than I ever could, by writing his contributions out of the game he made(!) and which we're all still enjoying (despite him). That's enough "revenge" for me. More is not needed. NC$oft will NEVER be forgiven though ... 🔥

NOW you tell me ... 😕

Actually, the early arcs all provide Merits at the end of them, which you can use to buy IO recipes with. And there are also badges offered for completing ALL of the story arcs in a zone.

Have you ever considered piracy Imgur?

Verified that this happens on my Time/DP Defender build.

I know ... right?

First I was a Scrapper. Then I was a Scraptroller. Eventually I graduated to become a Pocket Scranktroller. After that, it was just a matter of humiliating multiple (5) Rikti Magus at the same time ...

MA/SR Scrapper Redlynne started out fighting 9 foot tall neo-Nazis. She's 5 foot nothin' in that pic (and still is here on Homecoming). Later I added a Mini-Vest to her costume and put her in Pants and Sneakers. The "Red Line" (usually a Stripe of some kind) however remained the defining signature for her costume designs that used a Black and Red color palette.

SR Defense is fantastic ... except when it's NOT ... DE Quartz Emanator drops Rularuu Eyeballs Mind Control ... ... you get the idea.

Inherent seems off at higher levels due to most people being Aoe - so you are almost never at full power I've made the point elsewhere in these forums, but it bears repeating in this context. Kheldians (both Peacebringers and Warshades) wind up being rather ... selfish ... in how their Inherent power works. The team buffs the Kheldian (via archetype inherent power) but the Kheldian doesn't return the favor (through their archetype inherent power). The inherent power is also something that is rather an obvious legacy from what the game was like in Issues 2-3 which has not aged all that well with Inventions post-Issue 9. Incarnates have made their niche not as impressive as it was previously. To be fair, Incarnates have done that to pretty much EVERY archetype, not just Kheldians (or Warshades specifically). Toggle suppression would be helpful. (Got this request a TON) This one would be tricky to implement, given the way I understand how powers work. I'm assuming you'd need to give the toggles a "token" endurance cost (on the order of Combat Jumping) and then put the remainder of the endurance cost into the power effects itself. You'd then need to code the resistance and endurance cost of the power effects (both) as suppressing while in Nova or Dwarf forms, but active in Human form. That way, the bubbles suppress their benefits while in Nova/Dwarf form without dropping the toggles. It would be cool if the visual FX did NOT suppress while in Nova and Dwarf forms, even if the resistance and endurance cost (above token) effects of the bubbles do. That way you could have a bubbled appearance for your Nova and Dwarf forms. If you can manage doing toggle suppression for the shield bubbles, you ought to be able to follow the same principles for Orbiting Death and possibly even the Leadership toggles for Kheldians as well (and any other toggle powers they might be able to use). Slot Heavy There is just no getting around the fact that Kheldians have a "slot tax" on their forms that is very nearly crippling for their human form. Characters get a total of 67 slots from Levels 1-50. Nova form, if you take it, practically DEMANDS at least 11 slots in 3 powers to be useful ... and Dwarf form, if you take it, practically DEMANDS at least 13 slots in 4 powers to be useful. That's an extra 24 slots out of 67 you need to allocate towards your forms, leaving as little as 43 slots to spend on ALL of your Human form powers (including Health and Stamina!) ... because a minimum of 1/3rd (up to 1/2 in some Tri-form builds!) of your slots have to be dedicated towards enhancing your Nova/Dwarf form powers independent of your Human form powers. This then makes for a HUGE slot crunch for your Human form powers, many of which you'll want/need to 5-slot in order to get anything useful out of them (and the set bonuses you'll be slotting them with). Then needing to pay a Knockback Tax in slotting ON TOP OF THAT just starts feeling biased/punitive (especially on Peacebringers!). It would be different if there were a way to encode the forms to add +1 slot that could only be used on Nova form powers from Levels 7-19 on slot Levels (so 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19 for +7 Nova Only slots by level 19) ... and +1 slot that could only be used on Dwarf form powers from Levels 21-37 on slot Levels (so 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37 for +10 Dwarf Only slots by level 37) ... but I'm not aware of there being any way to program the game engine to allow that, let alone be able to "enforce it reliably" during a respec. So, nice idea ... but you just can't get there from here, I reckon. Knockback is rough Knockback is RARELY helpful. If there was a (preferably universal!) way to toggle swap between Knockback and Knockdown ... ON DEMAND ... such that "while Flag is 1, Knock* powers are full MAG, but while Flag is 0, Knock* powers are clamped to max MAG 0.75" would be beneficial to ALL archetypes, not just Kheldians. Being able to "pull your punches" when you need to ... and unload at full maximum power when you need to ... is really the ideal outcome here. However, needing to pay the Knockback Slot Tax on top everything else in Bi-form and Tri-form builds is just piling insult upon injury. Our builds are tight enough already, damnit! Mez protection The fact that just about the ONLY mez protection you can get comes from your Inherent power when you team is just ... Bad Game Design. We'd be SO much better off if the Kheldian shield powers (the bubbles) each offered -1 MAG protection versus all mez status effects, so as to give people a motivation to take all 3 shields even if you can perma Lightform/Eclipse for hardcapped resistances (meaning the bubble shields become useless to you unless the bubble shields offer something that Lightform/Eclipse don't, and mez protection can easily fill that gap, even at -1 MAG per shield). If combined with toggle suppression rather than drop in Nova/Dwarf forms, the mez protection of bubble shields would only be active while in Human form, keeping the Blaster-ish glass cannon design for Nova form intact. This would allow Human form to function is a MILD mez environment, while still needing Dwarf form in a HEAVY mez environment. Moving some of the more complicated/filler abilities to a Kheld only epic pool would help new players. I have the feeling that this would be more trouble than it's worth, honestly. Human WS needs work vs Tri-form Warshades are simply a lot more dependent upon Nova and Dwarf forms than Peacebringers are, with double Mire being the most obvious example of this. Warshades also lack some of the attack power options that Peacebringers have in their human form, such as Radiant Strike. Most of the attack powers you can use as a Human form Warshade tend to have long recharge times, making it very difficult to build attack chains that can be repeated. Their reliance on Stygian is frustrating I always felt that Stygian Circle was perhaps TOO DEFINING for Warshades, since it made playing a Warshade feel more like you were playing a Necromancer (who drew strength from the DEAD). Definitely a legacy game design power, since Stygian Circle was as much of a quantum leap for Warshades as getting (not inherent!) Stamina was for everyone else at Level 20. The only time I found reliance on Stygian Circle to be frustrating was against AV/GM foes, or when fighting $Targets that left no corpses to drain (I'm looking at YOU, Rularuu!). Dark Extractions are too squishy Maybe ... but there's just NO CONTEST with how much more useful they are compared to Photon Seekers (which self destruct to do their damage)! Unchain needs a rework - its not powerful and most people cut it from their builds Unchain Essence is one of those powers where you either have to 6-slot it or skip the power entirely. Using it is also disruptive to standardized attack chain rotations, since you need to switch $Targets (to a defeated $Target that left a corpse!) in order to use Unchain Essence. Now ... if Unchain Essence were set up as having an alternative trigger condition ... such as "piggybacking" off Orbiting Death ... that would make the power a LOT more interesting! Unchain Essence would remain a Click power (just like always) but also gain a "passive" component to it that would automatically trigger Unchain Essence against any corpse within Orbiting Death's PBAoE while Orbiting Death is toggled on (and not suppressed by being in Nova or Dwarf forms). Add THAT conditional "hands free auto targeting" to Unchain Essence and it would suddenly become a LOT more popular to have in builds! Add mob size modifier to Mire/Eclipse I have no idea what people are talking about with this. The post teleport animation is too long This is a problem with all Teleport powers generally. Ideally speaking, you'd want to have the Hover after Teleport be something that lasts for 4 seconds (current functionality) or until a movement keybind is used ... at which point the Hover effect "expires early" and you are free to move about the map. That way you can Teleport and MOVE as quickly as you need to, rather than being "stuck" waiting for the Hover effect to expire. Make the forms toggles that buff certain attacks vs having a new set of abilities. This would no doubt incur the highest amount of necessary recoding ... but in the long run it has a tremendous number of advantages to it, if it can be managed/pulled off. The biggest advantage to doing this is that the Slot Tax of the forms would go away. The problem though is that you trade the Slot Tax for a Power Picks Tax in which specific power picks are "Form enabled" to be used outside of Human form in addition to Human form. Bare minimum, this option would get rid of a lot of (unnecessary? legacy?) redundancy in Kheldian powers.

Except some of us DON'T (and WON'T) do Discord ...

Try moving to a different place/zone to finish earning the badge?

I was actually a GM for Elder Scrolls Online for 6 months starting at pre-Launch. I got to play AND spend 7.5 hours a day dealing with tickets. That was ... not fun. I remember asking my Trainer, in class, during training, before we got on the floor ... "What are the plans to deal with gold sellers?" The answer I got back was, to my mind, simply non-believable ... "We don't think we're going to have any problems with gold sellers." By the afternoon of the FIRST DAY of Launch ... there was gold spam in public channels. By the end of Launch Weekend (the game launched on a friday) ... there were bots farming. By the end of the first week after launch ... the bots were using GM Codes (which had been leaked to the farmers) to do their farming. By the end of the second week after launch ... the game was simply overrun with bots farming (and ruining the in-game economy). The only thing that put a real dent in the game getting overrun by bots and farmers was ... the launch of Wildstar ... after which more than half the game population simply quit and left to go chase The New Hotness™. My fellow GMs and I would joke about how ESO was launched so as to have a Paid Beta phase, because SO MUCH of the game was simply a bug ridden MESS ... even 6 months after launch the game was STILL a bug ridden mess, although some progress had been made by then (but not NEARLY enough!). I also called it a Massively Singleplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MSORPG) because the game was just about as UNfriendly as possible for grouping, even though there were dungeons explicitly made and tuned for group content in EVERY zone of the game. I was given a GM account to play at home (with instructions to NOT let on what my Day Job was as a GM for the game) and I played ESO right up until the company I was working for lost their contract (6 months after game launch) and most of us GMs lost our temp jobs ... and when that happened, the game account that I'd been given (with a 25 year lifetime subscription) was summarily canceled without notice or apology ... and I was like ... "Guess you just don't want me playing your game" ... and have just never looked back. Since then, I've never felt any desire or motivation to ever play ESO ever again, even after it supposedly "got good" 2+ years or so after launch (making for quite the long Paid Beta period). The game had a few things that were interesting about it, but mostly it was just a grindfest that followed the same rote story notes in every single zone, so it got kinda boring after a while. Dunno what it's like to play now, but as I mentioned, I've got no real interest in playing it ever again. I was a Player and a GM for 6 months starting from Launch. That was enough for me.

Actually, Powerboost is something of a "legacy power" from the pre-Invention (and even pre-Enhancement Dysfunction!) days, when long duration Click powers (like Force Field's ally bubbles) were a decided rarity. You simply didn't HAVE powers like Farsight or Fade in the game ... at all ... to worry about (spoiler alert: they showed up later). The other thing you need to remember is that Powerboost was designed for a time in the game's history when SO enhancements (and HOs) was all you had available to you. The penalty/tax you paid for using Powerboost was the delay in casting/animation time it took to use your powers (since Powerboost is not an "instant" cast power) and that delay could potentially upset your timing when in combat. I took Powerboost on a Controller (go figure, eh?) back in the day and found myself using it more while OUT of combat (mainly as a travel speed booster power) than when IN combat, ironically, simply because of the logistical juggling/anticipation act needed to use Powerboost effectively when combat got hectic and timing got really important. Eventually, I respecced out of Powerboost on that character simply because the habits I developed for using it did not match the theoretical theorycrafting performance profile I'd been assuming from the start. Powerboost spent a LOT of time on my powers bars fully recharged and not being used (which was entirely my fault, granted, but it's also how things wound up working out in practice, so there you go). Having played with Powerboost "back in the day" and having put it into a few builds for Homecoming here, I'm thinking that Powerboost (itself) is FINE and that the wonders of theoretical maximum performance are not going to be as consistently achieved as people like to make out that they will be (there are certain "inefficiencies of human" involved). The things that ought to be "fixed" (per se) would be removing Resistances from Cold shields (more trouble than they're worth, really) so that Cold shields can benefit from Powerboost ... and remove Fade from the list of powers that can be boosted by Powerboost (due to resistances and because the fact that Fade does augment via Powerboost is a flat out bug). That's basically my take on the subject. Although ... now that I'm thinking about it ... I wonder if Powerboost augments Victory Rush at all ... wouldn't that be something?

Okay, this is looking seriously INSPIRED as not only an entry hub but also as a transport hub. Totally has that "starship tech" vibe going for it. What exactly did you put your Pillar of Ice and Flame into?

Either slot up an alternate build or actually roll up an alt and slot them up with whatever they need ...

Not specific to Homecoming, but the last iteration of City of Data is available on the Wayback Machine ... although not every single page was captured in those scans.

Side effect of the "make it up as you go" process that wound up accretion-ing new factions into the upper levels over time in a way where trying to balance the resistances of enemy groups just simply wasn't a consideration/factor as far as balance is concerned. It was more a matter of finger in the wind/that's looks right essentially done in a vacuum, rather than reverse engineering everything from a balanced breakdown of counterweights (if that makes any sense).

On a slightly more serious note (but only slightly...) I'd be interested to hear about your experiences with the combinations and the things you discover along the way while playing. A lot of the time, there are things you learn through actual gameplay that wouldn't have been obvious to you while looking at a build in the hero planner of your choice and which aren't the kinds of things that yield easily to (overly?) simplified spreadsheet analysis of stats and repeating attack chains. Still, if anything I've posted winds up inspiring you to enjoy playing the game more than you'd expected/anticipated, then I consider my efforts to post those walls of text to be well rewarded. Pass it on.

And there it is ... I'm a Bad INF on you people ... as if there was ever any doubt ...