RikOz

Party-Grrl is my thirteenth level 50 character (MA/Inv scrapper):

Foolish Malta! Your ambush has been foiled, as I remain safe on the other side of this sliding glass door! (Yeah, I spotted them charging toward me before I opened the door.) Amusingly, I benefitted from that occasional glitch where you can't target enemies who are on the other side of the threshold. The Sapper there on the right just stood there while I punched him repeatedly.

Elektricheskiy Shok is my twelfth level 50 character (Elec Melee/Elec Armor brute)! This guy, like me, is in his mid-50s. Misha Yermakov was born in the USSR, and joined the Soviet army as a young man. He was selected for a special, scientific program, which caused him to manifest electrical powers. He became part of a Soviet military metahuman team. After the breakup of the USSR, he and his teammates continued on as an independent superhero team for a few years, but eventually Misha emigrated to the USA. He says, cheerfully, "Now I am capitalist!" Having fought Malta numerous times in the USSR, where he had been told they were American agents, he was pleased to discover that Americans also dislike Malta, and that he gets to fight against them here as well. He enjoys the fact that he is virtually immune to their sappers.

[NPC] Architect Patron: If only I could pay for snacks with tickets.

Level 50 number eleven! Miss Action (Psionic Melee/SR brute)

Is there anything that can be done to get rid of the huge delay in being able to target a Freak that is in the process of self-rezzing? Is there even a legit reason for the delay? It's especially annoying when playing a scrapper with no inherent taunt but with a damage aura, because these rezzing Freaks have a tendency to take off running before they can be targeted. It also came to my attention, once I started running alignment missions on a Vigilante, that this delay only applies to player characters, not to NPCs. Specifically, the "An Explosion in Peregrine" mission. If you run that one as a Vigilante, you get teamed up with Blast Furnace, and Blast Furnace will target and attack the rezzing Freaks the instant they start to rez, while the player is left standing there waiting for the rez animation to complete.

"Combat" NPCs aren't immune to this. I've lost count of the number of times Overdrive has aggroed on something way over on the opposite side of a gigantic warehouse room, only to immediately complain that she can't keep up with me. Frostfire and Miss Thystle are utterly incapable of keeping up with me. Likewise Silent Blade.

Just here to second what MrSnottyPants said. I was having exactly the same problem. Everything else was posting just fine.

I love my Fire Blast/Fire Manipulation/Flame Mastery blaster. She managed to solo Marchand's "New Praetorians" arc in Brickstown at around level 35. I can say that having Bonfire from the Flame Mastery epic pool is the only reason I got past the part where you have to fight three (I think it was three) Kronos Titans. (Having done it once, before I knew what I was getting into, I haven't yet had the nerve to try that arc again on other characters.)

Decided to completely redo Girra's "spectrum" costume (previous version a few posts back). Some more experimentation with color combinations finally got me much closer to what I was originally going for--making his body look like a combination of fire and poison. I added a full-body "Starburst Glow" aura in bright green, which combines with the orange flames from his fire armor powers to create an interesting effect. Finally, I switched to the Ascension armor pieces instead of the Cyborg stuff. The effects look better when he's in motion.

Is that jetpack a temp power? (assuming so, since you're also wearing the Warp thingy on your back) The Gold Bricker jetpack is available, with customizable color, in the CC: (My own ex-Gold Bricker, Goldbar--he also used the Warp backpack until the Gold Bricker jetpack was made available.)

Cobalt Claw (Claws/Invuln scrapper) was my one and only Praetorian (Resistance) character on live to get through the whole story and exit to Paragon City at level 20. I got her to level 31 before the shutdown (actually one of only four--I think--live characters to get past level 30 before the shutdown. When I resurrected her for Homecoming, I decided to skip Praetoria and just start her off in Paragon City; her bio references her origins by mentioning that she has a vague, uneasy feeling that she came from someplace else, but she otherwise remembers nothing about it. Anyway, she's up to level 41 now, and she has a few costumes I really like.

Overheard one from Super Unknown that I hadn't heard before: "I'm thinking of changing names. I'm starting to think 'unknown' was a bad choice."

Dr. Thorne at level 40:

New costume for Girra (spines/fire brute): Can't really tell except in specific lighting conditions, but the Spectrum parts are a mix of green and red. Unfortunately, Spectrum has the problem of one color dramatically overpowering the other color.

They'd only need to look at primary powersets, and specifically for smash/lethal, since those are the only resistances being looked at here. Honestly, I think most powersets are weak against certain enemies, depending on damage type. The idea is that you identify these weaknesses and find ways to compensate for them. It wouldn't be unreasonable to think the designers might have said to themselves, "By level 40, players should have been identifying and working on these weaknesses; let's drive the message home to make sure they get it before they hit 50". Still, I acknowledge that it could simply be a matter of perception, or confirmation bias: I only notice it when it happens that way. But those first three level 50 characters I mentioned (fire blaster, dual blades scrapper, martial arts scrapper) have all been at level 40 or above for upwards of three years, and they have each run those specific alignment missions many, many times (I like doing alignment missions). Once I noticed this "trend", I began to pay close attention each time one of them ran those missions, and the spawn results were very consistent. Mixed spawns for the fire blaster, rock monsters for dual blades, plant monsters for martial arts. There were occasional differences, and it was never a matter of 100% of one type of monster (well, until my stalker got that map with the immobile tree monsters--that was literally all that map had).

They show up in at least two of the level 40+ hero alignment missions. Which is where I actually started noticing the phenomenon I described in the OP. My first 50 was a fire blaster, and she's more or less equally effective against both the rock and the plant monsters, and those missions tended to spawn a roughly even mix of the two types. My second 50 was my dual blades scrapper, and that's when I noticed that the spawns had seemed to change to mostly rock monsters. My third 50, a martial arts scrapper, pretty much confirmed it, when she started seeing those same missions spawn with mostly plant monsters. My fourth 40 was a super strength brute, again with the smashing damage, and again with seeing tons of plant monsters in those missions.

Had it for a while on my fire blaster. Got rid of it because it completely removes the ability to do a proper, full-power snipe.

Last night I was doing the villain alignment mission where you enter the "ether plane". Clicked on the first glowie, and immediately mapserved. Finally managed to get logged back in, and restarted the mission. This time I got all the way through it, was about ten feet away from clicking the final glowie, and got mapserved again. Very bummed because it was an interesting mission with some lore stuff I hadn't heard before.

I can't find it now, but back on live I took a screenshot of my main planking on the ground after getting slapped down by one of those giant rock monsters in Eden, or maybe The Hive. She's laid out on the ground, with a group of these guys standing over her, so I added a speech bubble to one of the monsters, saying, "Sorry for party rocking!" (timely and relevant joke at the time ...)

Yeah, that's what I did on that map. AoE (Rad Melee stalker in this case) to wake them up, then just scrapper them down.

"Happy Place" by Cranius As I prowl around, killing the Alliance I don't believe that I was really called into such violence It's truly dirty business, requiring skill and grace Truth be told, I'd rather be in my Happy Place Chorus: In my happy place In my happy place My lips may both have fallen off But a smile is on my face You may not think an undead rogue Could live with such disgrace But when I'm picking flowers I'm in my happy place It's a place that's filled with harmony, where I could stay for hours I find myself at peace when I'm gathering up flowers While other rogues are busy slitting throats and stabbing backs I prefer to spend my time filling up my packs Chorus If there's one thing I cannot stand, it's being interrupted When that occurs, my mental state becomes a bit corrupted So if you find yourself inclined to meddle with my flowers Well I might find myself compelled to camp your corpse for hours Chorus: In my happy place In my happy place You just made a big mistake Messing with my space So let me introduce you To my dagger and my mace Cuz when you're picking flowers You're in my happy place

Well, D&D did change "Thief" to "Rogue". Mostly to make the class more neutral (I mean, "I play a lawful good thief" sounds kinda funny), but partly, I suspect, as a counter to those players who thought playing a "thief" meant that they needed to be all-thieving, all the time, stealing from the party...

I've come to the conclusion that the Devouring Earth are intentionally designed and programmed to specifically counter whatever a solo character brings to the party. When I do a DE mission on a character that does primarily Smashing damage, the map spawns almost entirely plant monsters (resistant to Smashing). When I do a DE mission on a character that does primarily Lethal damage, the map spawns almost entirely rock monsters (resistant to Lethal). Today I did a DE mission on a stalker. Here is a representative screenshot of literally every spawn on the map: Yup, those tree monsters that remain motionless and untargetable until they actually see you, rendering Assassin's Strike useless.