Sovera

Tsoo Troo?

Welcome to the fold, my super brethren! Don't worry about asking questions as we all went through it. Most of us just have been around longer, but we all started without a clue. Now, most of those questions have answers in the newbie guide that is in my signature. And probably more you're not yet aware of, so take a gander at it. The two uniques are the Steadfast Protection 3% defense and the Gladiator's Armor 3%. The SOs are the enhancements sold by any vendor. There was a time where you'd have to chase different vendors to get the ones right for you but these days any base vendor will have them. If you don't have a Supergroup base yet then consider making a basic one to plop these NPCs down, like a quartermaster, a midnighter trainer, a nurse, perhaps a tailor too. Then you can teleport to your base and train and purchase the enhancements you need. It's a one time thing you can share with all your alts so worth the few minutes it takes to set it up. If you have more questions or doubts even after reading the newbie guide then ask and we'll help. The community's great and quite helpful.

I logged in to give it a try and it worked fine with /bind downarrow "+backward$$powexecauto hasten"

That's why I have not found Dark Melee to actually be better survival than something like Fire Melee. Because it takes longer to defeat a group of enemies they have longer to stack up debuffs or keep chipping away at health. Just like I had big plans for a Stone/Martial Arts that would be grossly over the cap without any IOs. But then I played it and realized I was chiping at the enemies as they chipped at me, but there are more of them than there are of me. Between Dark Melee and Radiation Melee perhaps the second will serve you as well for a small heal, but it's endurance heavy and Stone is not well equipped to handle that.

T3 Alpha is all that's really needed for the biggest boost. T4 is just a cherry on top. T4 Barrier afterwards for the perma 5% to all and otherwise panic button. T3 Degenerative. Go back to finish the alpha. Last would always be Lore since it was so niche and Judgement would barely edge before since a nuke is fine and all, but only every 2 minutes did not make it super interesting, though alternating Barrier and Judgement did allow to push past problematic factions/challenges.

Even back when I teamed I didn't care if the person had a clue or not. Don't know where to go? I'll inform them. Don't have a good build or are properly slotted? It's a full team so we're obliterating so I wouldn't even notice unless they said something about dying so much or being so slow compared to others. AFK to take care of the baby or for a smoke? Go for it. AFK each time we enter a mission? Don't care (happened, but was very rare and I teamed a LOT).

Energy Melee and Axe were good too. EM's AoE is just mediocre and Axe is very endurance hungry which Stone has no tools to compensate other than the recovery boost in Crystal Armor. Fire Melee is just the best middle ground, IMO. Dark Melee helps a fair bit as well with an endurance tool and a small heal, but, again, mediocre AoE in my experience. Only a problem if soloing a lot.

As others have said do mention that you're new at the start. The community is, as a rule, pretty prestable. But they cannot guess you're not someone who has run it dozens of time.

Resistance does get shafted on anything that stacks debuffs. I have TALES of trying to fight Vampyr and whiffing endlessly if I didn't finish the fight early. Now, that said, you were pushing the envelope and the envelope pushed back. If you said you had these problems when pulling one group I'd say your build might need a tweak. But trying to pull multiple groups? Out of a problematic faction like Carnies? Council they ain't. That works if you're in a team and everyone is pitching in with buffs, debuffs, and raw damage to finish things quickly. Now if you want to try changing some things you can add S/L defense. Despite building S/L defense being poopooed by some because 'defense debuff will strip those defenses immediately' (which is correct) there are a heap ton of factions with problematic debuffs that do NOT defense debuff, and whose attacks have S/L components which makes the defense able to deflect them. Anecdote, but I remember doing Croatoa and being confused on why my Fire Armor was being knocked around so much since it seldom happened even while leveling on other Fire Armor characters. Then I realized that even while leveling I was usually always building up S/L alongside the rest, but with that character who was doing a challenge of not using my stored IOs it only relied on the -KB IO. That solitary -KB was enough on other characters, but, wasn't cutting it all by itself. Now all of this said if you're still pulling multiple groups of problematic factions then things will get hairy. Even my Stone Armor has died to Praetorean bots because I pulled multiples. Times like those it's best to retreat, regroup, and consider using an inspiration before starting.

My own preference towards the best middle ground has been Fire Melee for the fast animations and two PbAoEs. I found DM's AoE too slow for soloing, but if you like Dark Melee then stick to it as the small heal and endurance clickie kinda patch Stone's weaknesses. The build has 45% defense, 63% resistances (70% with one ATO stack, 76% with two), near capped HP, and 60 HPS regen. If you're not a flier you can replace Evasive Maneuvers for Weave (no need to add more slots to it) and be at 50% for those defense debuffing factions. This is not a leveling build but I can cook something up if desired. Tanker (Stone Armor - Dark Melee) Final build.mbd

My own Stone Armor builds have, without incarnates, capped HP, 50% defense and 70% resistances with one stack of the ATO. It's sturdy, but it's not THE sturdiest thing since it has no heal and relies on regen. I have, in fact, died to pulling two +3 groups of those nasty robots that both strip defense and strip regen. Granted, if I had pulled a single group it would have been perfectly fine since it was the only time I actually was in danger. With incarnates (or inspirations) this wouldn't have been an issue. Barrier would have made me invulnerable and even at it's lowest I would have been at 55% defense and 81% resistances. It would be pretty hard to die to anything with those numbers. Even a 50 inf small purple and no incarnates would put the build at 62% defense, or a small orange at the res hardcap. The downside is still the lack of hard heals. Sure, regenning 60 HP a second is nice, but when having 3.5k HP it will take a while to trickle back up. But, that's what insps are fot and tbh it's so very rare to get to that point. I'll take it since it can be near immortal by level 12.

I'd rather have it said by Bob Ross.

With that lore info then, yeah, it's natural.

An happy accident.

Not an in lore expert, but applying common sense unless all humans have psychic powers (which would then be natural) if it takes an accident of birth to be born with psychic powers then they are mutants.

Would those even work? Is there is no LoS for a damaging power would it not block Fold Space as well?

I've added your doubts to the guide in my signature since it seemed like it had a place there. There is more info there you might find of use.

The damage of STJ is backloaded into Crushing Uppercut. The powers otherwise animate fast, recharge fast, no problems with waiting for buttons to press.... but the powers themselves hit like a cooked noddle. It all boils to CU and three combos. But then CU has an awkward recharge that means we spend a lot of time spamming the weak attacks, with several times over capped combo points waiting for CU to come back online. A second heavy hitter is needed, so, yeah, Burn could fit easily and it avoids having to take the StJ's cone.

The consensus was keeping the stacks up and never use them by just spamming the first three ST attacks. Consider Radiation Melee as well. Bit heavy but the constantly flow of heals would do you good with Shield's lack of. You might not even notice the ATO proc going off or not if your HP is constantly topped off. I'd skip Devastating Blow and just go for Radiation Siphon, Contaminated Strike, and Radioactive Smash. But Rad's a bit endurance heavy and Shield has a lack of recovery tools.

Welcome aboard! I have a guide in my signature for newcomers so have a browse.

Using the Ouroboros crystals is the best way. Otherwise using the wiki but that's just busywork when Ouros is available.

Rage crashes are bad, but, just build for 65% defense 😄 Endurance will be a definite problem so stock up on Recovery Serums until level 50 nad be sure to place all endurance uniques in place sooner rather than later.

No. They only scale to your level. Not to your power. Requiem will be exactly the same power as before (low level enemies have slower attacks and do less damage in order to not overwhelm lowbies. Being higher level does not change how they were coded), where the player will have leveled, will have more powers, more slots, purchased IOs, purchased Envenomed Daggers if it came down to that. Not to mention that scaling contacts is not the same as scaling missions. If you did the mission and got stuck at level 20 with a level 20 Requiem, if you go and level 5 times and return the mission will still be level 20 with a level 20 Requiem. This is how the game is coded.

I'm currently testing Thunderspy and their scaling contents is a blessing. Even doing Ouroboros arcs does not exemplar us down. So outside of actually doing TFs all content scales up. This in turns means most/all builds and sets can roam the levels without being sad because we lost our AoE or travel power. While this is not a 'hey, what's your five pet peeves?' thread I feel like joining in. 1 - Lack of new melee sets. I don't care about buffing/debuffing/MM sets so all the new things have passed me by. What keeps my heart beating is the occasional armor or melee set revision as they almost always come out polished and shiny. 2 - STILL having the fear code in so mobs run at % HP. Good lord, it's 2025 and soloers are still divided in first and second class citizens. Any thing without an agro aura should expect to take twice as long to go through a mission, no hyperbole. Lets please have mobs NOT run, and agro auras simply mean they will prefer to hit the agro auro owner instead of a nearby squishy. 3 - Exemplaring still not being robust. Losing power is fine. Losing powers is not. But it's too baked into the game so I don't expect changes or the cottage cheese will curdle. 4 - The kill all with mobs hiding in the walls has been mentioned but deserves being repeated. Citadel in particular has had more than once some mobs who walk into the geometry and I go around and around and around trying to find them. A grace period where if we are in a kill and have been inside for more than 10 minutes should make all mobs visible. No five. I couldn't find another peeve I cared enough. Game and server is in a good spot. Now if we were talking of TS I would have more grievances as its owner likes things hardcore. Their regular gameplay is more exacting than my self-imposed ironman challenges here, and then they actually HAVE iron man challenge coded in 😄 But it's his server and he makes the rules so it's fine even if in my opinion it makes things a slog.

Years later I'm still prickly about someone on these boards calling me a cheater, I retort calling him an idiot. My post is scrubbed, I get a warning. Their post is still there to this day. Prickly, I say. Turn the other cheek, bend over, and allow yourself to be reamed in dry.