Llewellyn Blackwell

thats not entirely accurate, there are a few mish, that once accepted start a timer, that if you ignore, will lead to mish failure even if you never step in the mish. And lets not forget, back in the old days, and hell even now if they are being run by folks actually in need of the main reason, the freespec, that the TV trial can actually wreck and wipe such teams in the reactor room. Because its basically the same thing,a defend against many waves sitch, and one that once a wipe happens, will pretty much mean mish over.

my blaster who relies on a mixture of regen via drain psyche, and dmg res via force of nature to face tank, did so with the mobs on this mish, with no issue, set to x4+1 and only the final phase against the large group of EB pushed passed my toons face tank limits, and even then he thinned their group by 4 before they got him, and the named boss took off and foolishly isolated herself making the only kill that mattered at that point an easy one. That was on a blaster using less regen then a regen scrapper, and a pseudo unstoppable for my DR. Yes I also nuke constantly, but I can say this much with no doubt, my scrapper, or PB would def out perform my blaster on such a face tanky mish. Which mobs do you find especially punishing and why?

Its not like its some unique super hard fight. when ward goes untouchable, you head over to clarity and grab her and lead her to the pond, its just like leading the seer to her pedestal on the ITF. and its pretty easy because ward and his minions are leashed to the mansion area, so once you step off the cliff and drop down and head for clarity you lose a good chunk of mobs, especially if you did a good job keeping the midnighters alive so they can hold the aggro while you go get clarity. For me the part that seems to be being called the hard part of the mish, is one of the easiest parts of it. Im trying to express why I find it so and what simple methods I am employing to do so. And as Ive said I soloed it set to the mob size the Op struggled with as a team. I honestly atm am feeling if a persons toon is struggling badly on this mish, it needs a respec.

Uhm are you perhaps unfamiliar with the mission under discussion? In it we are defending the midnight mansion in an open world type map cut from the night ward world area. When your defeated, you dont leave the map, but instead revive at a location near the mansion. The complaint seems to focus around having ones self overwhelmed because they had upped their dif beyond their capabilities, and had a team that wasnt composed entirely of at level or better characters, and was lacking tougher front line AT types, in a mish that is all about face tanking wave after wave of mobs. It is true there is a point that one can, if they have allowed the mobs to build up, to near the rez location, cause a situation that is very tough to recover from. However as I just re played this content twice in the last 2 days, I can assure you there is no bugginess, just game design that creates a mission failure without a hard failure trigger like time running out. If your team does end up beaten down and overwhelmed, it can be a defacto game over. But after playing the content myself first hand I imagine it happening would only occur to those in over their head in the first place.

Just to make sure there was nothing buggy going on causing something I wasnt aware of I ran this arc last night on my stalker, and this morning on my name sake blaster. My mortal stalker on dif set to x4 +1 admittedly had some rough moments during the last fight, in part because I was rusty enough I totally forgot about the ward/clarity script event and tooka good beating before I noticed I had to go get clarity. but once I did skilled use of caltrops, stun/smoke grenades etc allowed me enough breathing room to get clarity to the pond, after that it was pretty smooth. The EB at the end went down like nothing. With my blaster, the hardest moment I actually had was the big group of EB at the end, They did manage to drop me once, as I took them all head on initially and only killed 4, not paying attention to the named boss and she ran off. Had to go track her down, but ironically she had isolated herself from her remaining cabal members and was easy prey. Now I never died during the ward/clarity part which kind of sounds like the source of the main issue, and I can see that getting things really rough especially for a full team with max mob spawn sizes causing a hell of a lot of chaos. Still Id imagine a good team wouldnt fall there and suffer the issue, and a bad team doesnt deserve a win so thats that imo. So to the OP again I say go from +1 to -1 as a start, and see if it still challenges your party.

I cant even see a thing in that mass of yellow, however Ive seen more then once in GL comics the ring opening up a wormhole as part of an emergency flair like beacon effect to summon other lanterns in an emergency, I believe it was described as draining a rings energy tremendously to do so. I also seem to recall Hal using one to transport the JL inside a force bubble to meet with the lantern corp. I mean yeah travel times in space are always wonky in sci fi shows. Until we really do have some ftl/wormhole type means in RL, the different scifi ideas will continue to create the wide and varied ideas on how it may be done.

I think you may be missing the crazy sci fi idea Im trying to explain. Know how we split atoms to make big boom booms? that we understand though crudely that in a single atom, enormous amounts of energy reside, that so called physical objects are actually mostly empty space, etc etc. Well one idea put forth is beings like Superman who seem to possess ability, energy etc beyond the physical limits, do so by being able to store and release energy in a way like nothing we know of that actually exist. They basically able to tap into atomic energy without splitting atoms. That was basically the original idea for Cyclops optic blast, a literal supernova in his eyes, fueled by his own biology drawing power his own atomic structure.

Uhm its well known the lantern rings can create wormholes, just saying.

if you trip me I did not accidentally stumble and fall. If you throw something in my face like pepper, I did not have a natural sneeze as a reaction to something naturally in the environment, rather a weaponized substance added to impact me. For example my earlier reference to a discussion between clark and john kent was from the smallville series, in which clark is on the football team and injures a player after apparently having an accident on the field and slamming into the other guy too hard. Clark knows something has happened, that he has been attacked in some way, because he does not have natural events like that. When he points this out to his father, its his mother who reminds John that clark is right, he never has accidents of any kind. after all it takes supreme awareness and control for him to exert any force and not destroy it. I mean hell the above panel your using involves a being from another dimension if I recall right. Thats about as foreign and invasive as anything.

While his origin story has been retold many times to the point of take your pick, a fair few have shown his powers had already begun to manifest in the pod, some due to him getting nearer to our sun, others because he wasnt some super infant still but had actually been in the pod several years and growing the entire time, more a womb then a cryo pod or the like. He was learning the whole time as well which is why in maybe the most beloved film depiction, that of the chris reeves superman, he is a toddler who can lift a truck, and is aware of enough to understand he can do so.

Magic is well known to be one of the most reliable ways to bypass supermans natural perfection. However in none of the examples is superman suffering an accidental anything, he is being attacked and suffering the effect of the attack. And the above is the case of a writer giving him less ability then some others. I can recall a superman comic where gas infused with kryptonite does not effect him because his body can filter out the K particles, and he spat them out in a truly green wad of phlegm. This suggest his bodies biology also possesses decidedly superior bio-mechanical defense systems to deal with toxic elements in the air, allergies from pollen. While some writers tend to treat superman and his power as basically being magical sun stuff, some do still recall that at his root, its suppose to be about his origin and inherent biology, and not just some new environmental factor.

Hm, could be he has atypically high health, he is a rather unique special EB your referencing, one that isnt a AV downgraded to an EB but an EB made to be a proper mini boss. It could be because I /ninja on most of my stalkers and when you can double placate and deal out several AS along side your other heavy hitters in a rapid combo under a double build up most EB tend to melt to stalkers opening assault. And the difference between me and most posters on these forums is I dont theory craft. I only speak from personal in game encounters and actions. I guess you dont use every possible tool at your disposal to put an enemy at a disadvantage. I do. IME a lot of stalkers are not using their placate now because they have gotten lazy, and play like pseudo scrappers, and for some like the OP I am guessing that leads to their troubles. A stalker can go scrapper mode for sure, with investment, a tactical mind set, and making use of all the tricks we can fit on our utility belts. Ill say it again P2W, smoke bomb, stun grenade. They exist, they fit even non powered batman character concepts. They will greatly reduce the threats posed by larger groups and let even flavor squishy builds function at higher dif settings if they so desire to push themselves. These 2 simple tools can have a huge impact on game play and yet very very few people seem to know about them. I myself was an active collector and crafter of the temp power recipes on live, and certainly dont see any reason to have some taboo about them because they are at the P2W vendor now. And thats not even getting into temp summons. There are loads of them out there, and I certainly see no issue nor shame in popping out a shivan shard to play meat shield if your team is lacking front liners.

My characters tend to share from a pool of assorted attuned less popular set bits I franken slot, until Im sure if Ill be keeping the build and want to invest in it. In the case of the stalker I am specifically referencing as having soloed/duoed all those arcs not all that long ago is actually a very heavy RP thematic character, and as such to fit my pov of a human centric character, does not have any set bonuses over the 2 part bonuses on some, and no power has more then 60ish % boost from enhancements in any given aspect of the power. But a stalker in general in my hands tends to be an OP I win button for content, especially anything lacking an AV as for me every attack typically ends in a kill, short of EBs that tend to take around 4 unless the foe has atypically high res to the dmg type in use. Look Im not saying the content in question isnt on the rougher side, most content that has to do with praetoria had mobs more fine tuned then the early ones, and so take abit more to put down. There is a reason that players RPing characters who actually went through praetorian content, tend to act in character like they have been through things other characters have not, because most of us know and agree that leveling, especially solo up through and out of praetoria isnt exactly a breeze for most. And that is what this all kind of circles around, because the OP here is basically not anything new, when ti comes to that other world, we frequently see players wanting it made easier, mobs weakened, ambush waves made smaller etc. But for those of us who genuinely enjoy the content, all these wants sound more like nerf this thing that is hard for me. Its not like we have to run every bit of content on every toon. I routinely avoid croatoa arcs, not because they are hard, but because I loathe the look of the mobs there, and am not a big fan of the mish structure there on many of the arcs, especially the stand around and defend the gate mish, just find that one dull as can be. But I dont go around asking for it to be made into a quick and easy boss kill or something just to appease me personally.

Well for starters you could always go to -1, which since half the team was sidekicks may have helped abit. I mean my stalker specifically a sj/ninja theme build who is actually on the squishy side and a blaster of the DP/MA variety duoed that set to x6 as an example, my stalkers typically solo set to x4 as they level in general even before getting ato and io kits. So you had one kinda sorta front liner in the form of a stalker, who still excels at avoiding direct aggro, 2 CC units, that at the best of times will struggle to lock down more then a dozen or so mobs, and a fort? sorry my brain isnt clicking atm whats a fort? Do you mean tank? I mean the team sounds on the squishy side and lacking in head on dps for rapid killing so yeah -1 sounds like a good idea for a tougher mish. Here are some tools to consider, stun and smoke grenades from P2W to act as additional cc, jet packs for all. I dont recall all the mobs as being flyers, so take to the sky and force them to divide. Temp summon powers for extra bodies are also an option. And hey they could always just make it no rez inside, no rentry, and thus an auto fail if you die right, at least you have some small chance to recover if you are able. Im just seeing this way more as a player issue than a game imbalance.

Im a big fan of combos like a thing or place plus a noble title. See my character Skylord as an example. Also terms from astro physics and quantum physics + a substance from the table of elements. Gold Nebula, Cobalt Quasar, The Daughters of Uranium could inspire an entire family sg. Just ideas Im tossing out there feel free to use.

Oh you thought they kept them as young adults, no they turned them into annoying little kids. And snarf into basically one of those too smart, but doesnt talk even though it apparently is as self aware as a human kinda animal side kicks. People often forget when they went into the pods, Liono was the same age as the cubs, and in fact in the comics, the girl actually was basically his betrothed if I recall right. And was why Liono often had moments of immaturity and childlike wonder and innocence, despite being in the body of an adult with an artificially enhanced education, both via the pod and his regular training and meditation with the sword of omens. Damn I wish we could get a quality serious version of the cats based on the comics, which frankly tended to be more gritty and TV -MA 14+ in their plots. Hell who am I kidding, some of the later comics would rival game of thrones, spartacus, and black sails all put together for over the top mature content. Like I dont even want to tell you what happened to cheetarah after she was capture by space slavers, it was bad, real real bad. For the slavers I mean.

You say that, but then I tell you they made Wily Kit and Wily cat into some of the most annoying little kid characters that dont even fight or do anything cool like they did in the OS. I mean Snarf was basically meant to be the doddering old nanny of Liono, and but frankly i loved him and his nephew, now admittedly I also loved scrappy doo so I may possibly be abit of a berk by most peoples ways of thinking.

Solo all those arcs on a wide range of ATs, the majority set between x4 and x6 for casual leveling fun. Methinks you may need to lower your dif, or perhaps your build has some flaw that needs to be dealt with. I mean you kinda skimped on the details. What ATs were involved, which ones seemed to struggle, what was your build, etc?

See here is the thing, outside of mobs getting stuck in walls, the anti KB faction has no valid position, just a demand for a want, that if it comes to pass will put the onus on those, who are currently happy with things as they are, to adapt to the demands of others because if they dont then they will be the one blamed, rather than those demanding another play their way. All the other QQ, about mobs being knocked back are as weak as they can be. Having tho run for a blink of an eye after a mob, in a game with some of the best movement action in MMO of its era, thats a good thing, a reason to love this game, not a thing to QQ about. Thus I deem it an invalid pov from QQers. The complaints about runners? Everybody runs sooner or later, it happens. While the AI is far from the best of modern AI, mobs fleeing as an act of self preservation makes a lot of sense, sure it would be nice if it could be spiced up, with mobs that should never have self value acting like sucide soldiers and what not, but the game is from the turn of the millennia, it is what it is, better they run, then sit down and beg to be killed. The o it is costing me a build tax if I want to shut off my KB and not annoy my friends group, well hey just about every good team centric build for every power set and AT comes at the cost of solo power. Upside the buffs of allied team mates are multiplicative rather then linear so in the end whatever your giving up to help your team work smoother is always a small price to pay for the return. I love KB, I love seeing it, I love using it, and as a leader of tfs and teams and a modest SG, encourage its use, and player mastery of your builds abilities, rather than simply dumb down the game for those who dont want to master the art, and cant handle playing with those who are not masters.

No the idea behind superman is he would certainly not have anything resembling indigestion or being gassy. There is actually a great moment in smallville were clark has to state it clearly to old johnny K when he is once again telling Clark to be careful. He says something along the lines of " Dad you cant understand, I never have accidents, I never stumble, I never slip, I never blink or sneeze and lose my focus for even a moment, only when there is kryptonite, or someone is using some kind of ability, and thats why I know that it wasnt some accident, because I dont have accidents" Its important to always keep in mind superman as originally imagined and in the hands of the better writers is indeed truly perfect, and it is how he uses that perfect to inspire, rather than abuse it to terrorize that truly makes him a Superman.

I am going to assume your talking original thundercats rather than modern remake that turned snarf into a non speaking animal. If me ol grey matter serves me right, even though he aged in his cryo pod, he also was the subject to some kind of education program while asleep, maybe that was in the comics though hard to say. However we do know from the show that the sword clearly has a reactive nature to its wielders will, the lions pride if you will forgive the pun as it was clear the swords powers tended to dim when his confidence was shaken. It also is an ancestral weapon and typical in sword and sorcery stories such weapons tend to carry something of the previous wielders and passes it on to the current when they truly become master of the weapon. It is def a case of true magic origin, the claw shield was clearly a tech creation.

Pardon we already got to see a Jedi fight in his full bad assery. Did you forget the beat down Vader gave luke at the end of Empire? Imo that is still among the best fantasy fights in anything. The way Vader first uses objects to distract, then batter and wear down Luke, Making Luke have to search for him, and then that perfect moment when the young rash upstart manages to land a minor wound, and Vader is like bad puppy and cuts off his over reaching hand. It was so much better then the force uses in the fights in the prequels. I was especially unhappy with the ones with yoda which should of been far more interesting and creative uses of the Force rather then lightsaber fights. And Darth Maul set the new precedent that lead to the ruination of the whole concept of the Sith. While I could be wrong, up till then the EU had kept them pretty vague and mysterious, and what they did have was not the dark jedi wannabe vaders we came to know today. I seem to recall a few of the EU novels had flash back scenes between luke and yoda, or communions with his force ghost, cant recall which, that made it pretty clear that the reason yoda was in hiding, the reason vader was so damn scary, was because he was a true fully trained jedi who had gone dark side. That he was basically unique. Im pretty sure all the stuff in the EU that codified the concepts we know today had came to be in the shadow of Maul and that cursed first prequel film. Now there was the new jedi order in the EU, and that did have an actual dark jedi order come into being with one of Lukes top students going full on dark side, pretty sure they ended up teaming with the witches of Dathomir or some such, which I am like 90% sure is what that crazy evil witch in that one ewok movie must of been. We did get mass saber on saber fighting in one book during that series I recall. But I cant recall anything set in the pre prequel era in the EU books and games that depicted the dark jedi that we tend to picture sith as since Maul. Lightsabers and making them was supposed to be a big secret by the by. So yes Vader having one was part of his big deal factor. I even recall a campaign from one of the early pen and paper games for SW, in which the entire focus is recovering a saber that was stolen from a tomb by a group intent on using it to learn how to mass produce them, even though they are suppose to be nearly unusable for non jedi trained folks. Which is why I still say Frell to the prequels, and frell to the disney era stuff. I watched Rogue One and that was it because I figured that one by all accounts didnt really impact the original films in any real way, it was just a dirty dozen in space ww2 movie basically. Ill stick to the novels that while not everyone of them had a great author, over all created a fairly consistant EU for decades before we got any new films for the universe.

Im one of those SW nerds that lost all excitement about the prequels the seconds I saw the first trailer and the outfits worn by Liam and Ewan. Lucas really lost touch with his own creation. when you imagine the jedi order, and council when seeing the originals, I myself tend to picture something more like the knights of the round table. The fact Obi Wan was a general in the old era hinted at them being exactly like that. And why the several thousand jedi that made up that order might sound like a healthy number, when your talking galaxy spanning defenders, then just like the green lanterns, its going to be 1 jedi per vast region of space, like entire solar systems at the least. The real issue imo is that they never really outlined exactly what the old republic was in the original trilogy. I always saw it most like rome, and actually compared The Emperor and his taking power as akin to Julius Ceaser had done. With Vader kinda being like mark antony. We know that is basically how GL wrote anything, by just looking at something else and putting a different skin on it, so for me that is the most likely suspect in what lucas was originally inspired by when imagining a figure taking over a republic and becoming emperor via military power. Hell look at the costume Luke wears in ROTJ, it is basically a mixture of a catholic priest, marine dress blues(colored black) with for a twist as the bib like chest of the old cowboy style shirts most famous due to being the style of shirt the lone ranger wore rather then the traditional button up.And it kinda makes sense. in GLs youth songs like the Halls of Montezuma, and the wonder warrior status of the marine( not to mention them frequently being depicted as modern knights in recruitment adds, we know he was a huge fan of the old adventure serials of his youth which the lone hero cowboy wandering the land and putting down tyranny was a major figure of, and ofcourse the catholic church and its ever present ties to knightly orders like the templars, and heavily mythologized crusades were hand in glove with. Hell he is even a hero in black in the last film, which puts him among peers like The Shadow another serial hero from that era, one who dressed in black and wielded psychic powers.

all the temp power jet packs are abit under cap, but even 1 max fly speed io in swift will push them to cap if I recall right. Hover can be pushed to I want to say around 38ish mph if one really pushes fly speed/travel speed bonuses in sets along with putting max boost in swift. Quickness in SR can also help push hover a tad higher. Finally the jump pack/steam pack can be used while hovering for a speed boos to hover during their duration. I find this handy on my hover toons in mishes as its usually recharged by the time a big room is cleared and allow another fast hover to tight turn through tunnels faster than most can run in them.

There is an idea I know some toss around, and Im not an expert so it at best sounds like half decent sci fi babble, but the idea some bring forth, in part supported by that weird superman red/blue pure energy form era, that since we all as all that is, at the smallest level are just energy, superman is just more compact, Hence his super density rendering him near invulnerable. It should also be pointed out in the Dark Knight Returns, one could put it to the sheer explosive force, and the sun being so blotted out by the nuclear cloud and winter that followed it, that is why he was so badly injured. Likewise all star superman may as well be unique to a single timeline, as in some like that in kingdom come, he eventually gains true complete immunity to all things even kryptonite from the level of saturation he has achieved. We see in some he ages, and some he does not, so clearly there must be some further environmental variation between the infinite earths that make this specific and very meaningful change in his nature. In some he is all but eternal lasting as long as a yellow sun does shine, and in others he wont live much longer than a normal human.