MistressOhm

As someone who ran a Robotics/traps MM from 1 to 50 on Live, FROM City of Villains release, I can ... somewhat concur? I had more issues with controlling the bots, rewriting macros to assign modes, and learning how to not pull too much for the minions to handle. I never thought of the problem as "not enough DPS" though. It was more along the lines of "control, control, you must learn control!" because bots getting curbstomped was usually due to them acting like hyper-enthusiastic puppies and stomping around through other spawns, and so forth. It was a long slog though. AFTER the Invention system had dropped, I started pushing IO sets into the build, specifically to increase hold duration, damage, and the like. That's when the set actually 'bloomed' and I renamed the character from an everyday name to a supervillain nickname, "Dame Demolition". EDIT: I would also posit that -regen is NOT simply a DPS boost. It's a mechanic to reduce how a target 'un-does' damage already applied. Put practically, it means that, given a sustained rate of DPS, you can bring something down faster, BUT the primary assistance with -regen is for targets who normally "heal through" any and all damage that gets applied. If you can slow down their heal rate, you have a better chance of reducing them to zero, and possibly defeating them in the first place.

ah yes, I remember that. Level 50's not knowing what the tram was for, or how to access contacts. I thought about specifically PL'ing a character whose origin WAS the AE system, as an "NPC" that had somehow had their data shunted to the resuscitation chambers instead of the garbage file when defeated. Kind of a TRON/Automan concept, a constructed entity that was originally only virtual. The PL was supposed to be a character-defining flaw, in that this entity came out of the system at a very high level, but was completely clueless about how things worked in realspace. It made more sense at the time to simply block out all the abilities she 'had' but had yet to grasp the ethical implications of using them... so I ended up leveling her normally.

As I understand, Experience and mission drop rewards in AE is primarily a Homecoming thing, NOT a Live thing. I remember when Architect released. Everyone flocked to this cool new system to post up player missions and content, and ... several PL farms nearly broke the system. Atlas Park was instanced into three zones, sometimes four on weekends. Matt Miller/Positron nearly ripped the AE system out of the game root and branch, he was so pissed. The compromise was struck, that AE content would only grant tickets, NOT influence or XP. It may (!) have been relaxed later, but yeah, that first month? Things were pretty effing crazy.

So we're shitposting, now. Okay.

Razer is awesome, until it isn't, and then you have to wrestle with their returns policy for repairs/replacement. This includes shipping the item back to HK (at buyer expense). With stores opening up around the country, there won't be as much of a need to ship broken stuff back to Hong Kong for warranty work, as in-country brick and mortar also requires decent inventory (which can also be used for warranty replacements more quickly). But, until they reach the inventory Critical Mass to do that, any servicing or warranty replacement will take weeks or even months. This is why I've only purchased their peripherals, and NOT their actual systems. If I do end up buying a Razer computer, it'll probably be one of their tower-case desktops, because while I know my way around the inside of a laptop, my hands are getting old(er) and my fingers are not as nimble as they were back when I effected field repairs on Toshiba Tecras for a living.

A lot of roleplayers do want to be the 'star' of the session. And Sovera's little segue to an is similar to what I've found as a Second Life dominant. Most of the 'bad' roleplaying in THAT space is also "the universe revolves around me". That, in my mind, is exhausting to put up with - everyone you engage with, regardless of their supposed status in the scene, is convinced that it's about them. Not the group. Not constructing something awesome and memorable together. THEM. I learned very quickly, to be truly appreciated, the best thing you can do is adapt to what others need. And the same goes for any roleplay (adult or otherwise). Casting yourself as a support character rather than the main one is INCREDIBLY satisfying, because a room full of support characters end up swapping the lead role with each other, and just about everyone gets their moment to shine. And if you do end up RP'ing with a Mary Sue that somehow, thru a cosmological accident at birth, the Known Universe DOES revolve around them? Okay... fine. I don't have to compete with this person, I'll just roll with it and if they want to RP again, I'll be 'busy'. 🙂

In my mind, "XP Debt" is basically recovery from your injury. You're off your game, maybe sore, maybe even a little afraid. Elements of PTSD, perhaps. But you have to somehow get back into the fight, and work past the issue in order to get back to your formerly awesome self. No Debt until L10... well... let's be honest, most of the low-level goons, minions, and ne'er-do-wells aren't supervillains themselves (except for the occasional Damned or Bone Daddy I suppose), and even they aren't that powerful in relation to the rest of the city. So the chances of facing Death head on in such scraps... enh. I've seen worse when motorcycle riding, daredevils that are convinced (even after a crash!) that they're the next Valentino Rossi and it was just Bad Luck that they binned it. But as you get older, perhaps have a few more scrapes, close calls, or even a few weeks in hospital, you get disabused of those notions of Invincibility. I've rolled characters that were EMT-based. As in, "What would an EMT for superheroes be like?" It turned out to be a power-armor prototype from Crey, on loan to the PCFD. All of the "empath" powers were explained as battle triage devices, drugs, and the like. And it being a Crey production, there were... side effects. LOL. The worst missions are those that, no matter how hard I try, I get my butt kicked. Veles is the first one, but there are many. EB's that (in my mind) are incredibly OP, do not adhere to the 'rules' that most NPC's have to cope with, and the like. What's the roleplay for having to phone in a completion? "Uh, yeah, this is Hero Y, I'm laid up in the hospital. That mission I was assigned? Well... there's more to it than what the briefing let on, so you'll need to send a team in. Here's what I know...." And then Longbow sends in a squad to take down whoever it was that laid me out. (not sure that would work for Lt. Tendaji... since they are Longbow... hmm.)

Y'all are posting workarounds. This is a request for Something Cool (even if the workarounds make it redundant, perhaps even useless).

This is not precisely the "boss escapes" AE trigger mechanic, more like the instances that lead you across Atlas Park zone, go in one door and come out another. The Sewer Network already connects zones also, but was thinking of perhaps an instance (out in the open, or enclosed) where you enter on one side and then exit on the other, getting hit by ambushes or "distractions" (sudden tasks to complete) that slow you down while you do so. It's kind of baked into the script that the boss 'escapes' since the team never actually sees a Big Bad, only evidence of their passing. When you get to the other side and 'exit' you're popped out in another city zone, instead of the one you started the mission in.

I've gotten quite used to the LRT power in the game (and it's an added incentive to collect at least one badge from every zone you visit). But, it seems to be limited to the zones that have base portals. So I doubt we could 'unlock access' to places like the Midnighter Club and Cimeroria w/o them. BUT, it does open up the possibility of teleport 'prestige' powers or accolades to get characters to these places from Damn Near Anywhere. Obviously these should be gated, and not be simple to get (as is the Ouroboros portal for simply stepping through someone else's portal). But, I can see the Midnighter Archivist badge (or some other criteria centered around the Midnighters) giving access to a long-cooldown TP power to the Midnighter lobby. Likewise, since Daedalus can somehow 'see' forward in time, perhaps completing his mission arcs would allow you to purchase a prestige power from him that ports you directly to Cim. And because I'm a complete fashion wh***, another appeal for the Oracle robes as player costumes, plz.

I posted a Bug thread wherein I was wondering why the EB's would suddenly bug out/despawn without a defeat, and it turns out ALL of the door spawns are running on the same code, EB's as well as the small fry. 1) They exclusively aggro on the door clicker/team, so as to not go after randoms nearby. This is a hard lock, tankers cannot taunt them away. 2) If for any reason they cannot execute an attack for 60 seconds (mezzed, drained, held, feared, ragdolled into the scenery, out of range, LOS blocked), their Attack mode expires and they shift to "I'mma Leave Now" mode, which is 20 seconds of finding/moving to a nearby door, and if they can't reach it, they immediately poof once that 20 seconds is up. This is how you can run away from them and they'll only chase you for a minute and then give up. In your case, if you're far enough away that the Crone cannot attack you, she'll sit there. Most of her stuff is up close, as she's a Storm Controller with some Electric attacks. Not sure why she wouldn't try and fly over to get into range though, unless there's something preventing her from doing it. My tactic to take these on have been to launch a nuke/end drain attack, then throw on a Slow/-Fly debuff and pound them into submission. Solo, it's often the case I do TOO good a job nerfing their attack chains, and the 60 seconds expires between attacks and they poof on me shortly after that. If I'm on a team, they take enough damage that they don't last the full sixty seconds even if locked down.

This of course is where a lot of the "nerfed!" hoorah is coming from, because people got used to certain things being 'unbalanced' and 'unfair' for so long that it became normalized. Then when it's addressed, the ZOMG! chorus occurs. Another casualty of a volunteer dev team - you don't have a huge cadre of QA testers who can be assigned to testing specific things, producing data to be analyzed, and so forth, and so things like the DoubleXP power "bug" can exist for months without anyone actually noticing the math is off.

I've a DB/Nin stalker with CT and Teleport binds, and she's a Tsoo Sorcerer killer. No matter where they pop off to, I just tap my CT/Teleport "TP to Target" bind to follow and stab them thru the midsection. If CT is on cooldown or the distance is too far, Teleport will handle it, just takes a second longer and then I just need to twitch slightly with WASD to drop the hover. (I also mapped SHIFT+WASD to CT short distances in the cardinal directions, so jumping from one side of a mob spawn to the other, or getting out of caltrops/ice storms/other AoE debuff areas is easy.) teleport-bind.txt

Hide is a REALLY CHEAP defense mule, you can pretty much run it with zero End straight out of the box. I'd not skip it just because you don't actually want to sneak about, it's practically a Def passive.

Stealth no longer stacks. This is why anything less than full invisibility is going to feel 'broken' with SS, whereas before you could combine SS with something else and get full Hide capability. The Celerity stealth proc for travel powers is probably the best you'll get other than a dedicated Invisibility pool selection, but if you don't want to always stealth when moving, you can slot it into Sprint (or a prestige sprint power for a blurry effect) and toggle it off and on as needed.

Traps works well with MM's, because the player can 'prestage' the pull without worrying about Leroy running in early. As a Defender set, I'm sure that it'd work decently well as long as something else has aggro so you can run into the scrum and drop a Poison Gas Trap or set up Trip Mine for some big debuff/damage AoE's. But solo, you're better off staging and pulling rather than running up "here, have a bomb". And while a lot of folks say Trip Mine isn't that great, set up with an AoE Damage set, and set out multiples in an overlapping pattern (I could get up to five at once on my MM), and the 'pull round the corner' becomes a killing field. Couple with Caltrops for more 'run randomly into more bombs' effect, too. BUT... Traps is very much a playstyle, and having to set things up makes it Not That Great for speedruns. People get impatient while you rig the stage.

Vengeance is really only useful if you've an entire team that has it - stacked, it's insanely OP, but with only one application it's not that great. As such, it's more a situational gimmick than a must-have. It also needs a faceplanted teammate to use, so if you are mostly a solo player, don't bother.

Hover with Hurricane makes for a good KD tactic, yes. Hover + Evasive Maneuvers gives you a bit more repositioning speed, so if something does 'break out' of your Hurricane corral, you can usually wrangle it back. Snow Storm is good to keep fast-moving mobs in check (looking at you, Warwolves). Downside: Oh hell more toggles... smh. The trouble with the KB/KD conversion IO is that it actually lessens the magnitude of KB to turn it into KD, which means whatever you slot it into loses some knock ability against bosses. Also, Tornado has a high-mag Fear effect, so anything not stunned / thrown about is going to scatter under their own power anyway. That's why I went with Gale KB/KD instead of Tornado, it becomes a simple "knock a few things down" cone, not nearly as random. But, /Water's blasts are like this already, or could be, so... it all depends on what fits the playstyle. Hurricane does need a Recharge mod to make it a binary toggle, otherwise you've got a few seconds between turning it off and turning it back on again. Thankfully, most -ToHit debuff sets have a Recharge IO in them, and the -Range and -ToHit debuffs persist for a few seconds once out of the wind. Lightning Storm can be made perma with one Recharge, as long as you've the end to power them repeatedly. I've heard of Stormies popping more than one at the same time, but my old one always dies as the new one manifests, so I'm likely right on the edge with one Recharge. I'll have to think about Perf Shifter +End proc in Stamina and the two health +End and +Recovery procs in Health, but as stated, I'm getting significant amounts of End refunded with all of my /Elec attacks, too.

From the lore/roleplay perspective, I agree that chatty NPC's makes for an engaging mission, and allows some expansion on "what's going on" besides Wall O' Text (that only the team captain gets to read anyway.) For those that only want the speedrun without the exposition, one can always banish NPC text to another tab or turn it off entirely. Zone transitions: Let's limit these if at all possible. I WOULD like to see a "entrance zone | instance | exit zone" mechanic used (if this is possible!) so that one could 'chase' the quarry through the instance, dealing with all the roadblocks (NPC's, perhaps mayhem destruction as distractions) that the objective can throw into the path of the stalwart task/strike force members. Even though the mission is to "Catch X before they get away" the task force uses this as a construct to keep tension up and people engaged, kind of like a road chase movie. So IF a zone transition is called for, make it more than just a courier mission with a few ambushes along the way. This method is ... enh... and with mission teleports being a thing, there's too high a likelihood that the group simply leaves the ambush behind where it mills about and attacks unsuspecting players. Defeat X of Y street sweeps: If it really fits to the narrative, possibly, but it's much too easily overdone. So a task force that has these as a considerable chunk, I would think badly needs a revamp. GM spawns: YES. Always a good way to close out a task force, especially since a lot of these yield extra merits and sometimes badges for a defeat. The one part of the Synapse TF I like is when Babbage spawns at the end. Boss fight mechanics: This is something that WoW does well (and to a certain extent SWTOR), and CoH could leverage better. Most boss fights are a tank-and-spank, perhaps with some changeup in what the boss does, adds spawned, etc. But if there's things you need to use to make the boss vulnerable, or defuse/interrupt a nuke attack, perhaps directional shields that require better positioning, all of these things make a boss fight 'interesting' in regards to strategy. Not saying every TF needs a complex boss mechanic, but it'd be better than "overcome the regen, everybody debuff and DPS like crazy".

That would make for a good test, actually. Burn a Merit to get a tip, make sure it appears in the list. Can this character even buy any of the tips in the first place (with a Merit in the salvage pane)? Does another character on the same account get them?

Common salvage - 4 tech racks for tech salvage, 3 arcane racks for arcane salvage Uncommon salvage - 1 tech rack, one arcane rack Rare salvage - 1 rack Special salvage (costume bits) - 1 rack "personal vaults" in both tech and arcane areas 4 insp racks, arcane = team imbuements, tech = mid/high tier and dual insps 3 Enhancement tables, 1 for IO's, 1 for SO's, one for DO's (which I probably should get rid of, as no one uses DO's anymore!) 4 Invention tables, Pillar of Ice and Flame, and Cauldron of the Furies for tip missions Lobby has Trainer, Icon, and Quartermaster NPC's and a Merit ATM

You should probably file a support ticket on that. Also check to see if any of the 'bars' in the Tip area are full. If they are (and you dismissed the "Morality" contact tip), you likely won't see any more Tips drop of that type until you resolve the Morality state.

Other than Cardiac for End discount, I'd not be the one to ask on that, I'm a newly-minted 50 that hasn't dove into the deep end of the Well of the Furies yet. 🙂

You don't get Alignment Missions, you get 'Tips' that you have the option to follow up on. They're basically one-off Contacts. You should start getting alignment tips at level 20, and if you follow them into missions, you'll either reaffirm your current alignment, or shift to the next one over: Hero > Vigilante > Villain Villain > Rogue > Hero Tips show up in a separate tab in your Contacts window. There's currently three types: Exploration (which guide you straight to an Explore badge in the named zone), Alignment, and Event (which is how you get the Malleus Mundi mission for the Halloween season.)

The question is, can one actually 'beat' forum trolls? Other than not letting them pull aggro? 😄 ------------- Now... as to this concept of "Echo Chambers"... y'all know what those are, right? An Echo Chamber is a space where the only response you'll ever get is a positive one. An Echo Chamber is not a healthy place for debate, because by definition, there is no counterpoint, no rebuttal. It's all either "Yay! Go you!" or silence. The TOPIC could be negative, or positive. That doesn't matter. What matters is the lack of reasoned opposition. By that I don't mean the typical "you suck!" catcalling and meme-fuel shitposting, but actual "Ok, you posted X, Y, and Z, let's look at them each and see how they stack up." We should welcome critical debate (which only addresses the topic, NOT the posters!) because that allows all to see the subject en entire, not from limited facets that may be the flavor of the day. By the same token, there's nothing wrong with saying "I don't like where this is going" or "I disagree" as an opinion. That's fine, too. Sometimes people have more of a gut feeling, and may not feel like typing out a reason why they have it (or they honestly are struggling with the 'why' themselves.) I have no issues with people posting something that I disagree with. I DO have an issue with not allowing a rational and reasoned reply, covering how, and why, I would disagree.