Rathulfr

It's all honor system. There's no prize or punishment for this: it's just something we're doing for bragging rights and a sense of accomplishment. If you feel like you have to lie about deaths, then you're only cheating yourself. IM Blaster 1 has died once due to "Lost Connection to Mapserver" while in a mission, surrounded by enemies. When I got back online, I was laying face down outside the mission door. I asked @Chainz (Mirujai) if I had to delete and start over because of that. He said no, that doesn't count because it was completely beyond my control. So technically, my character has died once. I haven't mentioned it before because LCM deaths are allowed (and I presume not encouraged). If I look at anything in game that reports defeats, it's going to show that death, even though it doesn't really count.

Blaster's Log, 2106.08 - levels 18-20 Faultline fun! Ran Jim Temblor and Penelope Yin arcs in Faultline for nostalgia's sake. It's been awhile since I ran those, way back in retail live. I got to rescue Fusionette, and teamed with her and Arbiter Sands, of all people. Then I had to rescue Penny's dad: I fully expected to buy it in the last mission. Oddly enough, it was kind of a let down: it was a lot easier than I remembered. Almost died a couple of times tonight (I really hate The Lost Anathema), but not in that mission. Phew!

Wow, it's @Sunsette! 😍 The OG Sentinel guidance counselor from 2019! You inspired me to try out Sentinels in the first place, and I learned so much from you. I've missed seeing your posts recently. Of course, that could be just me, because I haven't been on as much, myself.

My opinion, not gospel: it's the Iron Man/Woman Challenge, not the Iron Team Challenge. Teaming up with fellow Challengers is one thing, but creating your own team of Challengers, under your own direct control, feels like cheating, to me. But on the other hand, perhaps it adds complexity to the Challenge, because all 3 player characters are indeed under your control, and that means that all 3 player characters must adhere to the rules (and spirit) of the Challenge. That means if 1 dies, it's permanently dead. You can't whip up another one on a whim. You'll need to continue without that teammate. If you want to replace that player character, it has to be rebuilt from scratch. At least, that's my opinion, and how I'd do it if were multi-boxing the challenge (which I'm not, so take this for it's worth: not much). As for the /AH: there was never any rule against using the AH. Earning your own Merits and then playing the AH is a perfectly legitimate method of game play, as long as you start from scratch. For my IMWC character, I got 3 orange Salvage drops right away, within my first 10 levels, which netted me over 1M Inf on the AH. I didn't "game the system": I just sold the orange Salvage for fair market value. I also got all the AP badges for the LRTP and 5 Merits, which I used to get Converters and sold them for fair market value. I earned those Merits fair and square -- no gimmicks. Exchanging them for Converters to get cash is perfectly legitimate, because any player can do so easily. The only rule is not giving your new IM character any advantages from alts, such as transferred items (cash/Merits/Enhancements/etc.), SG invitation and access to storage, etc. Basically, you're playing the IMWC character as a Day One/First Time player. All players get Salvage drops, and any player can earn Merits by collecting Badges and finishing story arcs (in fact, I've amassed quite a collection of Merits so far -- I haven't yet felt the need to convert/sell these yet, thanks to the Salvage drops. As long as I'm profiting from my own efforts, and not from any largesse of my alts, I'm playing by the rules.

That looks like fun. I wish I was there. 😁

If you're not too discouraged to try something a bit more fun and is still kinda like Regen, try a */WP Sentinel. I love my Energy/WP Sentinel: he feels the most like classic The Invincible Iron Man™ to me. I also enjoy the heck out of my Ice/SR Sentinel: SR is a treat on Sentinels, although you'll be focusing on Def there, instead of Regen. Perhaps you'll get more mileage out of Rad/WP or Rad/SR?

Blaster's Log, 2106.07 - levels 16-18. I ran the Laura Lockhart mission arc, and almost got killed by Field Marshal Metzger. A last second Respite saved me, and I got the last shot off to defeat him. Facing those 5 waves of 5th Column Nebel Praktikant as prelude to that fight was not easy. My Inspirations tray was emptied by the time the dust settled. Phew. I then set Leon to rights and earned the War Hero Badge. All in all, a good day's work.

Yes, agreed.

I blame @Mirai! Boo! 😆

Basically, if you want to play a Sentinel for maximum effectiveness, you're going to play a Psionic Mastery/* Sentinel: they're all Psionic Mastery Sentinels, regardless of whatever other primary or secondary choose. Your primary power set is almost irrelevant, because you're going to replace it with Psionic Mastery's Mind Probe + Dominate at levels 35+. Sure, you might pick a primary that offers a few attack powers to fill-in your rotation, but it's basically all MP+Dom all the time. Any other attack powers you might have are there to carry/trigger procs, not really do anything else. Indeed, this is also my biggest problem with Sentinels right now, too. I don't want to play Psionic Mastery exclusively: I want to play the primary I chose, a primary that's actually... I dunno... maybe... PRIMARY? But Psionic Mastery is simply too good for Sentinels to forego, so it's essentially mandatory. That is indeed a "really big problem". The only solution is to either make the Sentinel primaries actually better than Psionic Mastery, or, nerf Psionic Mastery (which I generally don't think is a good thing). This is why I play Sentinels for fun, not performance.

For squishies like me, Yes, it is worth it, if only for the additional control and defense while traveling and for muling IOs. I'm not sure that the +Def goes away entirely: I think half of it suppressed, not all of it. But I could be wrong. I'll test that later, unless someone else knows for certain. edit: found the details at https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/27807-travel-power-updates-in-issue-27-page-2/?tab=comments#comment-347727 Evasive Maneuvers Replaces the old version of Afterburner as Flight's tier 5 power If you previously had Afterburner, you now have Evasive Maneuvers Note that if you previously had Fly, the speed bonus previously given by Afterburner is built into Fly for free, and you'll get the new version of Afterburner as a free popup tray power Evasive Maneuvers is a defensive toggle with moderate endurance cost (0.26/s), aimed at providing you with excellent airborne combat mobility Provides the following effects whilst another Flight pool power (Fly, Hover or Group Fly) is also active: -Fly and immobilize protection Knockback resistance Significant air control Some unsuppressed flight speed (allowing you to fly much faster during combat) Also provides the same level of defense as old Afterburner while out of combat, but this is removed while in combat This bonus is suppressed for 10s when entering combat (the same as Stealth's out-of-combat defence) The defense bonuses will suppress if the user attacks, heals or buffs an ally, commands a pet, or interacts with a mission objective

This: "Sentinels are a ranged combat class" (emphasis added by me). That's the way they're designed. They have no ST melee attacks, only melee range PBAoEs. They are not designed for melee combat, even with armor secondaries. Kudos to you for trying to make them work that way, but your efforts were doomed from the start, through no fault of yours. That's not to say you can't play a Sentinel in melee range: you can. But you do so by embracing your ST ranged attacks along the way. Regen is a tough secondary for doing that, though. I have a level 50+ Fire/Regen Sentinel that was fun to play, but I definitely played him ranged. My best melee range Sentinels are */SR and */WP. Finally, Sentinels are underperforming in pure damage: we're all eagerly awaiting whatever changes @Captain Powerhouse has in store for them. Even if Sentinels could provide meaningful melee attacks, they'd probably be just as underwhelming as their current ranged attacks. We already complain about how poorly they compare to Blasters: this would just give us more cause to complain about how poorly they compare to Scrappers, too. In the meantime, I've just given up and decided to play Sentinels purely for fun and flavor, instead of pure power (ranged or otherwise).

Blaster's Log, 2106.06 - Levels 14-16 Got from 14 to 15 running missions for Meg Mason in the Hollows. I lost my Internet connection while I was in a cave fighting Vahzilok Abominations, so I suffered one defeat by Lost Connection to MapServer. I check with Mijurai and he said that LCM deaths don't count -- I had no control over the situation. When I was able to get back online, I was tired of running Meg's "arc" -- it seems to never end? I checked the wiki to see how much more there was to it. Imagine my surprise to find out Meg doesn't have an arc: she just regurgitates the same handful of basic missions with different villains endlessly. She's like a human Radio/Newspaper! I did not know that. So I decided to visit Julius the Troll, instead of running laps for Meg. Unfortunately, I outleveled Julius by grinding Meg's missions, instead. *SMH* On to my next Contact, Graham Easton of Steel Canyon. Dealing with the Tsoo for that scumbag got me to level 16.

Having AVs in TFs is kind of the point of TFs, IMO (how many more acronyms can I squeeze into a sentence?). It's part of what makes a TF different from other missions. So I would prefer to keep the AVs in regular TFs. However, I do like the idea of having "alternate" versions of TFs where the AVs can become EBs, instead. I don't know if that would be done with Ouroboros or by some other means.

I do not concur with the OP. Having limits is what makes planning and creating builds interesting. One has to think about what they want to prioritize, and to make trade-offs by forgoing one set of choices with a different set of choices. It's a challenge that adds flavor to every build, and encourages creating multiple builds (in some cases). The most obvious example of this challenge is Hasten, which is in the Speed pool. Do I really need Hasten on this build? Do I need it so much that I'm willing to burn one of my four available pools just for that power? On a few of my characters, I actually have two builds to handle just that question: one build with Hasten, and the other without it. I can then choose which build I need for a particular session/mission. One of the biggest criticisms of Homecoming's approach to the game is that it already makes too many things too convenient. While I appreciate many of these conveniences, I actually agree with this sentiment in general. We already have too many people complaining that the game is too easy, partly because of these conveniences. Taking away yet another inconvenience -- the challenge of picking only 4 pools per build -- only exacerbates that problem.

Anything that you get automatically when you materialize in-game after character creation is fine; e.g.: Prestige Power Slide. You just can't visit the P2W vendor to get anything else after that. No Athletic/Beast/Ninja Run; no Sands of Mu/Undead Slaying Axe/Blackwand/Nemesis Staff; no Mystic Fortune/SecondaryMutation; etc. Completely no frills. (edit:) I miss Reveal most of all.

Blaster's Log, 2106.03 - Levels 12-14 Transferred from Indomitable to Everlasting, and joined the Iron Guardians SG. They seem like a fun bunch. Ran Flux's arc and defeated Frostfire with assist from SG mate, Randomizr. We both almost bought it a couple of times due to large spawns -- I'd forgotten how tough Frostfire's gang can be at that low level. Frostfire himself wasn't too much trouble, after we peeled away most of the trash around him. It was definitely still exciting, though: my adrenaline was pumping, that's for sure. Dinged level 14 when I called Flux at the end of the arc. That was my cue to call it a night.

Details? I'll transfer IM Blaster 1 to Everlasting right now. How may I get invited?

Blaster's Log, 2106.01 - Levels 1-9 IM Blaster 1 of Indomitable successfully finished the Habashy and Thierry arcs to get to level 7 without much trouble. Next adventure: Skulls in Kings Row. Finished Shauna Stockwell arc -- Chernobog almost had me down for good, but I put him down. After that, a bit of street sweeping got me to 9 and I'm ready to tackle Eagle Eye's arc tomorrow. Blaster's Log, 2106.02 - Levels 9-11 Earned my first 1M Inf by selling 3 orange Salvage drops for 450K each. Also selling all other Salvage on AH for vendor price as minimum. I spent quite a bit on getting all of my Enhancements up to level 10 SOs, bought from Freedom Corps vendors. Just finished Eagle Eye's arc and am level 10.8: earned Skull Buster and You Should See the Other Guy badges. No active Contacts in Kings Row now. David Wincott showed up in my Find Contacts window, so I went to The Hollows and finished his first arc to get to 11. I then teleported to Montague Castanella to run The Midnight Squad arc. After successfully rescuing Percy Winkler, Lady Jane (she lived!), Argot Burgwot, etc., I was admitted into The Midnight Club and made a member, closing out the night at level 12.5.

Which shard(s)?

Sure, I'll give it a try with a Blaster. But I won't stream it: I'm not a fan. Introducing IM Blaster 1, of Indomitable Everlasting.

I do not like to watch other people playing games, computer or otherwise.

People panic in this case because there's actual history to justify their panic, to some degree. We may not agree that panic is necessary/warranted, but we can understand why some people might feel panicked. I don't think that their panic is going to go away by saying "relax, we won't get caught" or "relax, everybody's doing it".

Minimizing the problem as "everybody does it" is just as bad as maximizing the problem into a "panic". I was merely taking issue with your minimizing the problem, just as you are taking issue with maximizing the problem. Ultimately, as long as we're both agreed that the rules are reasonable and we're both following the rules, there's no problem at all. 🙂

Just because you can see these things doesn't mean that (a) they didn't get C&D letters, or (b) they haven't somehow gotten permissions or licensed the IP in some way. It's like when you see a someone race past you on the highway well over the speed limit: they might have gotten away with it while you were looking, but that doesn't mean they weren't caught eventually. And even if they weren't, their violation of the law doesn't mean that you can get away with it, too. As for the Marvel suit: yes, it didn't go well for them; however, it still did force NCSoft/Paragon to crack down on IP violations in the game. There was definitely an effect on the game, even though Marvel lost the suit (and NCSoft didn't "win", either). The point is still valid, and it's still a legitimate concern and vector of risk: it's not some imaginary "panic" that's spun up out of nothing.