Bionic_Flea

Thanks for posting your builds and your testing results, Ston! For those that think the tests should be run differently, respectfully: run your own tests with whatever parameters you want. I think it would be great to run a similar test with just level 50 generic IOs to compare the sets a little more directly, but I don't expect Ston to run it. Maybe if I have free time over the holidays I can at least give it a start. One question though, @Ston: looking at your fire melee tank, why didn't you use Achilles Heal in any of the sword attacks vs the Lysosome HOs you slotted? I didn't look at the other fire melees to see if they were slotted the same. (lemme check). Edit: The other ATs were similarly though not necessarily exactly slotted. But non used Achilles.

Yeah. This idiot is out.

When I was doing my testing, I ONLY used Serenade to isolate that power. From looking at your videos, it seems that the critter that was confused but just stood there was also under other effects, hold, immob, fear, etc. I think what you may be seeing is an animation conflict between all the effects.

I tested it a few more times against +2 Rikti in one of the RWZ missions. I can confirm that breaking LOS damages the target but the confuse does not take. I hid behind a rock with a target nearby, jumped and hit Serenade on the way down. Every time I was behind the rock before the animation, I got damage but no confuse. A few times my timing was off and I was still visible to critter during animation and I got both damage and confuse. Unless I missed or broke line of sight, every other hit of Serenade gave both confuse and damage.

I think that each issue with new missions saw improvement, with the exception of the Daedalus Arc ironically written by someone they hired for their writing ability. That arc is one of my least favorite. I like the zones that have linked story arcs that tell a larger story: Hollows, Striga, Croatoa, RWZ are all super fun to me. The fact that they minimize travel is a bonus! All of Praetoria also followed this theme. On the villain side, Oh, Wretched Man from Seer Marino, which makes me pity Wretch, and Westin Phipps, who actually makes me feel bad for running him. How many arcs actually make you feel anything?

Most of my alts are all in one SG. But occasionally someone comes up with a theme that interests me and I join the SG to be in on the fun and level up. I also had 2 SGs when live, one blue one red. On those rare occasions when the need to grab stuff from another SG happened to me, I either used e-mail or grabbed an alt from a second account to pull the shopping list out of storage and then drop them on the character from the other SG.

Symph/Dark controller

I just confused a level 50 warwork minion and Lt. and even briefly confused Siege. Seems to work for me. What are you trying to confuse?

I hope you one day come back to play too, Solarverse.

Or maybe . . . one in a million . . . chance of a lifetime . . .

There's at least one that was bought and sold. How else did the 20 million price "paint" the last five sales?

Stay gold, Ponyboy.

Well, an occasional death is to be expected (even when trying your best to avoid them). And yes, the 20s and 30s are when you start getting more foes with exotic damage and mezzes and debuffs but don't yet have enough powers or slots to deal with all of that efficiently. But an occasional death should not be equated as "solo-unfriendly". If that's the standard, then everything in the game falls short.

Wut? I've mainly soloed from 1-50 on every AT and most powersets from issue 0 on. It is certainly easier on certain ATs and powersets, but that just means those sets get to turn up the difficulty sooner.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I echo Snarky's gratitude to the GMs, Devs, and Staff of HC. And I'll add to all the players who add their knowledge, time, and personalities to make this game fun after almost 20 years. Thanks everyone!

Moral of the story: Blame Yomo.

Correct. If you don't have any immob or taunt, I would recommend refraining from caltrops on AVs/GMs.

NPCs in the game basically have a frustration meter. When the frustration meter reaches a certain level, the NPCs want to run away. Excessive misses, taking a lot more damage and not damaging, "afraid" status caused by things like caltrops and fire patches, constantly taking damage (DoTs), are all things that fill the meter. So caltrops has afraid status, and DoTs, (plus the damage from the Bots, which includes a fire patch) and Force Field Generator + Bot bubbles along with a good build will have you and the Bots at soft cap defense leading NPCs to miss a lot. The combination of all these things makes critters want to run and they will unless you immobilize or taunt them. It's most noticeable on Arch-Villains (AVs) and Giant Monsters (GMs) as every thing else dies too quickly to let them run.

ECHO! ECHO!

It was a bone thrown to controllers many years ago by the live team after containment became a thing. The Purple Triangles of Doom made controls all but useless, but with a hole to immobile at least they could double their already low damage. Oh, and AVs and GMs hate caltrops and missing. The combination of not being able to hit due to defense and the dots and afraid from caltrops is too much for them.

This is an older build where I tried to fit in as many procs as I could. This build is before the recent changes to Bots so while I think it would still work, I would probably re-work it to move some slots around and maybe pick some different powers. But it works really well and can solo AVs and GMs pretty easily.

I ran a test to double-check and, indeed, I earned Patrol XP even though I set myself to No XP in the settings. I think that might be the most elegant solution -- make turning off XP also turn off Patrol XP. It makes intuitive sense and lets players select 'No XP' just before logging to avoid it and turn it back on when they start, or just leave it off if they are done with or not interested in Incarnate progress. Standard code rant applies, of course. It could be as easy as a switch or as difficult as brain surgery.

I thought the patrol XP blue went away when you turn off XP. At least, for 50s it has all the little circles filled and the bar is also filled blue and stays blue. Question: Do you earn Patrol XP if you have XP turned off when you log? Rudra, do you have a second account? I wonder if killing yourself in a PvP match would be faster than letting NPCs do it . . . wait, do you get debt for PvP deaths?

I went with a emphasis on the cones and getting them range bonuses to make them go farther and deeper.

No, we shouldn't. That wouldn't solve a single problem but causes many.