Six-Six

I don't recall ever having trouble finding Sakai. He does appear on the map, and I feel the progression is intuitive enough to go to the doors. While I agree it doesn't spoon feed you the information, it does teach you feel around and interact with the doors. As for the powers disappearing from the tray, I run Breakout with almost all of my new toons and this has never happened to me. It has happened to toons that I've created, skipped the tutorial and straight to Mercy, THEN being parked for a few days without doing anything. When I log back to the toon, it's powers are gone from the tray.

What kind of monster sets fire to pandas???

I forgot to add that The Hounds of Love in Reunion, one of the top if not the biggest SG on the shard, runs TFs and Incarnate trials with sole purpose and explicit intent of familiarising aspiring players to one day lead them. They're called "casual" in the LFG, IIRC, and are scheduled weekly; and they're advertised and scheduled differently than the "regular" which almost always coincides with the WST and ones aptly labeled "badge" or MO runs. The league leader and his lieutenants of team leaders do a great job of informing everyone what to expect, what to do, what not to do, and tips and tricks that work; they even answer questions people may have regarding certain parts. Of course there are the hecklers and those who still go off on their own inconsiderate of the entire league. but most of the people there behave like they're on a guided tour. I haven't seen the like in Torch, Indom or Ever (the internet gods won't let me play on Excelsior)

While the intent is noble and community building, the saying "you can lead a horse to water..." may triumph in this situation. I suppose the most you can do is advertise TF/SF Familiarisation Run where 1) it's the opposite of Speed Run and 2) you call out basic story, objective, strategic directions, things to watch out for, etc. to get the team members cozy and comfy enough with the run that they might try it themselves. In the end, it will be up to the person to hopefully do the same, or at least grow the hair on their balls to take initiative to start a TF/SF on their own. The wiki has enough info to get anyone started... again if they wanted to... but the specific experience either from personal mistakes or one handed down by a mentor or trainer will still be invaluable. There was a time that I did learn the ins and outs of most TF/SFs by joining both PUGs and friend-led ones over and over (there are still some that I'm as good as a headless chicken during a prostitution raid) and have lead some myself. I also learned that I'm not too fond of PUGs and that I may not be cut out to be a leader. If a team member bit off more than he could chew, strayed from the group, is about to get ganked, or whatever, I just didn't care. I'm not too anal on roles (healer, cc, etc.) but if you can't pull your own weight, at least keep yourself alive so I don't have to double back and rez you. And spoilers, I won't.

cool beans. I didn't know that. still a newb troller. 😃 I am aware of how awesome deceive is. On a slightly different note, I did try (for the first time) the concealment pool for my Beast/ MM. I use Grant Invisibility on my wolves and lions primarily for theme: they're supposed to be stealthy hunters that sneak up on their prey. I tried monitoring their def and while the description says that the def drops when the stealth does, I don't see it in combat attributes. I don't know how to test it further. Another tangent with Group Invis or Grant invis with teams is something I read in another thread. Some people in teams don't like their costumes obscured by stealth powers. This is apart from what @BrandX pointed out about not using stealth to actually stealth.

I may be overly biased, but I think the problem stems from PUGs. in those kind of teams, everyone is just doing his own thing while trying to get through the TF/mission as fast as possible. Not only do they not coordinate, but I get the feeling they're trying to one-up each other by having the most kills... I dunno. I myself am not fond of PUGs. Maybe it's because i've been on really good teams where the members have coordinated attacks. For example, when I run missions with my friend, he and I --both blasters-- have an unspoken rule that he takes the right half of the mob while I take the left so as not to waste both of our snipes on one bloke. I've also witnessed probably one of the best "tanking" I've seen in years: this was when a tank jumps across the room which was filled with 2 mobs and us to yank aggro off a scrapper with a sliver of health left. Very impressive. And when we go for the pull, the tank of the team does his thing while the rest of us wait the ambush... except the stalker. Nobody minds the stalker. 😃

Go to Options > Windows then scroll down to Status Window Buff Display and make sure Hide Auto Powers is Disabled. From my experience, those icons seem to be lag-dependent and will sometimes disappear if you're suffering from considerable connection issues. If you haven't tampered with the Options settings, then they eventually return on their own.

It is. In Reunion, there were Invader tours (don't know if it's still a thing) every week, sometimes several times a week. Some bloke with Schweinzer as a contact and knowledge of the markers takes a team to all the exploration badges with the bank jobs optional. go in, get the badge, get out, next city. takes less than half an hour.

I only took superior invisibility. Its stealth is as good as Stalker Hide that I can stand in the middle of a mob and pick their noses without them noticing. I didn't want to make phantom army invisible with group invisibility as it defeats the purpose of them taking initial aggro instead of me. /dark has Shadow Fall, which I didn't take, but I did take Fade for a panic button. I don't think Time has any stealth powers. If you're talking about concealment pool it would seem redundant, besides, the def you get is only active when you're not being attacked... (though my combat attributes sometimes says otherwise, but I combat attributes is sometimes not on the level with the stats) which yeah you don't want to be, but it defeats the purpose of defence once you do get attacked.

@biostem until that happens, I try to make do with some of the auras like starburst glow and beast rage. some of the others have a surprisingly nice effect with the stalker-level stealth. 😃

Sorry... don't mind me. Had a comment but... yeah, nah. don't mind me.

I wish they'd roll out the wyvern jetpacks one of these days. Here's mine. But @Virtual Green's is much better. 😃

I feel ya. I sometime lose interest in a toon when I find out that a certain power hides or obscures the costume I spent time on. The latest one was my Warshade that turned into a walking Fluffy because of Shadow Cloak. It was making me choose between defense stats and looking good. Hard choice. This is also the main reason why I rarely play Stalkers. While most have a No FX option, some will also let you minimise the effects by playing around the customisation. In general, I've found colouring something Bright but with one of the darker blues/ultramarines work best (the black/grey leaves a haze sometimes). Other than that, I join you in your plight. Moreover, i wish the "stealth" levels of costumes/powers would be in the form of a slider, or at least something that you can control the opacity or transparency of your character.

@Ukase I feel ya. KB is our friend. Took me about a year trying out different ATs, powers and strategem. It was frustrating to die around late 40 and starting from scratch. But now I'm used to all of it, notoriety settings, no P2W, everything... that I play every toon with the mindset of permadeath. When some of them do die, I feel a great loss and have to take a step back to decide if the toon is casual enough to continue with a death on his conscience or if he's serious enough to be rerolled to try again. Most of my failed hard core toons die from lag or being mapserved and logging back in sprawled on the floor. haha. but a death is a death. While the fear of death has made the game much more fun, challenging and overall interesting for me, the downside is that it prevents me from joining most TFs and PUGs, thereby forcing me to solo most of the time.

@AspieAnarchy You are correct. You did explain it right off the bat. Sorry, I misunderstood. My bad.

I prefer the long way of the Invader. 1) Visit a broker to unlock Newspaper at level 5 2) Do X number of paper missions to get a bank job from a bookie 3) Rob a bank, get the exploration badge, earn a nifty temp power in the process 4) Repeat every 5 levels If you do miss/out-level a bank job, as one does doing villainous things all over town, then you can go to Lord Schweinzer. He's usually unlocked by the time I'm 40+ due to the content of the regular missions. Then you can do the mayhem missions over and over as there are other badges to be earned in them. The accolade isn't that important to me, so I'm never in any rush to get it. Besides, the 7th bank mission will award you a +max hp temp power (good for 24hrs in-game) while the 6th one gives +max end. That's like getting the Atlas medallion and TF Commander at level 35. And if you're so inclined, you can pick up other stuff if you beat up the right people. What's more is you can do this solo. And probably my most favouritest-est reason of all: you can destroy stuff and kill civilians. Red side is the best side.

I personally am struggling to find the motivation and logic behind this suggestion. Is it a rename of existing powers (Rad Blast and Atomic Manipulation) with a few switched powers thrown in? Is it a totally new power set? Because if it is the latter, then 1) some of its primary powers are redundant with the secondary. Now I know nothing of code, but I'm anticipating such redundancy may cause some problems. 2) it sure seems a helluvalot like Rad Blast and Atomic Manipulation. And if it's the former, why are we fixing something that aint broke? It sounds like a rather selfish request to satisfy a personal preference rather than a well thought of suggestion to improve a set. Additionally, I don't think it would be fair to the existing Blaster primaries for this proposed one to have 2 melee attacks while the others sets don't. In doing so, aren't you stepping into Dominator territory? Alternatively, the OP may want to try Peacebringers. The animations and powers are quite similar to Rad, and you get a nice mix of melee and ranged attacks as well as ST and AoEs. @srmalloy I hear ya! it irks me to no end how "most people" perceive all things radioactive as green. I always make it a point to change the colour of my rad toons. For all intense porpoises, Radiation blasts should be invisible to the naked eye. 😃

I don't mind how it is now. I don't PL my toons, so at the lower levels, I like how I have limited powers, slots, and practically everything else. I also have to prioritise accuracy/efficacy, endurance, def/res, damage, etc. while trying not to get killed. Things usually get sorted out around 30-40, 45 for late bloomers. Moreover, never have I ever looked to incarnates to fix my toons' shortcomings. In the interest of averting and avoiding power creep, what aspect of your toon (preferably of equal importance as end reduction) are you willing to give up or trade for such a change?

I apologise in advance for tooting my own horn. I recently found myself with some down time due to connectivity and lag issues. It was so bad that I couldn't even run in game without bumping into buildings. So I thought I'd hit the costume creator until it passes. As a change of pace from my usual Blapper or Brutinator, I was grinding a Peacebringer, whose play time is interrupted by the lag. Though I'm not skilled enough to play bi- or tri-form, I do like the idea of being able to shape shift. I'll give it a go when the toggle suppression patch rolls out... but I digress. So there I was in the character creator. I started without anything in particular in mind. After a few minutes, a Griffin was staring back at me. I decided to make him a Blaster. I've never tried Psi/ on a Blaster before, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I chose /Fire for the secondary primarily because the Griffin costume was asking for it. I really didn't give it much thought since I was just killing time. At first, I couldn't reconcile the synergy between Psi and Fire. Even the power animations didn't want to hold hands with each other. Then I thought, why don't I play him like a bi-form PB... and boom everything fell into place. So I present to you, Salazar the Accursed. He's a collector of odd things... until one of the items that came to his possession had the spirit of a Griffin. He inadvertently releases the seal and the Griffin took control of his mortal form. Both souls fight for dominance; so he had to learn "the mystic ways" just to keep the beast at bay and his sanity in check. Now, they've struck an agreement as to who gets to go out and slay. The fact remains, though, that one of his previous possessions now possess him. The bio will be better (I'm sure). Basically, it's the same formula for DC's Jason Blood and the Demon Etrigan. Game-wise, he has almost all the psi powers and Arcane Bolt while in human form. He gets no stealth or travel powers. He does get limited use of Cauterise from the secondary. But when the need arises, he transforms to the Griffin. The mythical beast, in turn uses all the powers from his secondary, Flame Mastery, and Enflame from Sorcery pool. He does have access to flight, but he fights on the ground on all fours. I've set up the transformation (costume change...with costume emote Light Magic for the rune circle) with the help of PB macros so that the form changes come with the power tray swap. And there you have it. What started out as a time-waster to wait out the lag has definitely become one of my better concepts if not my best one to date. Is he the strongest? I highly doubt it. The segregation of powers may not be in his best interest in terms of the meta, but he can hold his own most of the time. He's really fun to play especially in the context of his concept. Let me know if you have concepts you're really proud of that you can't help but share them. 😃 [Edited a few spelling mistakes]

Yes, you are correct. Yet, while most characters walk, I stride. where most characters stay, I linger. Even in death and defeat, I don't just die, I perish. 😃

Positive and attitude. 😃

I'm afraid I don't use MIDs so I am unable to view your build. Not a build expert by any stretch anyway. As long as it works for you, then the build and choice of powers is cool. 😃 In my experience, Caltrops doesn't proc very well. I usually just stick an Annihilation -res or Pacing of the Turtle -recharge or Ice Mistral's +cold dmg and leave it at that. If I have slots to spare, I pick a set bonus that I need from the 3 I've mentioned. And no, Airburst won't cause knock up.

@TheZag Haha, my inbox is the same: merits, emp merits, recipes, pvp recipes, purple recipes, IOs, chump change... etc. And mine aren't 2 years old either. They're older 😃

This has saddened my otherwise gleeful day. =( But, thanks for what came before it. It was very enlightening. Besides, there is still hope. There's always hope. 😃

my Psi/Martial isn't that high of a level yet, but he's fun. Martial in general is fun for fun's sake. I wish it packed more of a punch, but I think Psi is strong enough for both of them (honestly, I don't need martial for anything other than flavour, but style wins over sensibility). I haven't unlocked throw sand yet, but if it's anything like Smoke Grenade from /Devices or Blinding Powder from /Ninja then I can definitely use it in my rotation. A blaster has no inherent def/res, so anything that has =to hit translates to def in my head. Smoke Grenade can be used to open as it doesn't alert the enemy of your presence, plus it obscures vision so that nearby enemies don't aggro while their buddy is being massacred. on the other hand, my DP/Ninja uses Blinding Powder in the middle of a fight (both chronologically and physically). I'm sorry I can't be of more help. I am not able to view your build since I don't use Mids. Then again, I'll reiterate that style will always triumph over sense, so if your concept uses Throw Sand, go with it and embrace it. 😃