quixoteprog

I rarely checked the server numbers but just my personal experience has been that Excelsior used to be at high with three red dots almost every time I logged on, no matter if it was right after work or dinner of for a quick few missions before bed, weekdays or weekends. Now it is low to moderate, with one or two yellow dots. But that is probably part of a general trend where the flash mob hit it shortly after it became public and people have been drifting away now that the new has worn off. The population seems to have been dropping slowly over the last month or two and now with the onset of the holiday season that has no doubt exacerbate things a bit what with people getting pulled away for family stuff. It is a trend I expect to continue until they get the legal stuff worked out and can start promoting the game as "official".

According to the "Flavor of the month 50" thread the Assault rifle / Ice Manipulation combination has been the least likely to get to 50 over the last 4 months. That may just be a thematic thing where few people even make such a character because they don't have a concept. But you might check out the bottom 20 and see if any of those suck extra hard. Looks like Sonic Attack and Ninja training are individually the lowest primary and secondary respectively

That's JOCKET, not Jacket. Duh. Moron! It's... er... a pocket... in which you put your... joke... ets? So, no. It does not come in red. Only blue.

Yeah, yeah I know. As near as I can tell their powers are the same. And since one of them stands between me and my candy, he must die!

Yeah, the break frees were the only way I survived Manticore long enough to drop the Heavy on him. I would get one shot, then he would lock me down with one shot EVERY TIME. My next plan is to try the Bloody Bay mission to get a Shivan and see how well that works as a tank. Pop 3-4 purple pills, drop the pet, and start firing away.

Indeed, I believe that was Pinny the Younger who said this first, if I'm not mistaken. As for dropping from a TF, I would say it is bad form, but not so much after the TF begins as after the team leader lays out the rules. If the leader waits until the second of third mission to explain his expectations beforehand then he has only himself to blame if people drop then. Obviously, that is a PUG rule. If you know everyone in the team and have run several TFs with them prior, then it is reasonable to expect consistent behavior.

I think chaos and team wipes are fine, as long as everyone knows what to expect going in. All it takes if for the team leader to talk at least a LITTLE bit to the people joining. Just give a short explanation on your expectations. Even if it is just, "I don't plan on using any strategy, just kill stuff and do whatever". It will let people know what to expect and they can stay or leave as they please. If you want to do corner pulling and expect people to stick together then just say so up front. I was in one team where we wiped a couple times and then managed to survive better after a bit of adjustment but one guy wanted to slow things down and do some corner pulling and be more methodical. Another complained that "what we are doing is working now, so why bother?" I finally wished everyone well and left the team because I can take wipes and XP debt much better than inter-party bickering. Lest anyone think I am trying to paint myself as Mr. Perfect, I will give an example of my own ignorance and how I learned from it. I knew very little about any content past issue 3-4 when I came back and so for the first couple months I never did DFB. I ignored all the spam for it in LFG channel because I was just happy doing the regular content. When I finally did it I thought it was some of the best content in the game. Not worth endlessly repeating it, but fun enough that I now run it about 3-4 times with each new guy to get them into their teens to early 20s. When I first ran it however, I got booted from the team after the first run. You see the guy running it got mad because I did not listen to him about how to earn the boss badges. He had mentioned something about badges WHILE we were running it. The problem is he waited until right before the boss fight to hastily mention in chat and people were already starting the fight when I saw it. I did not pay much attention and killed a couple zombies and he got mad. Needless to say we did not get the badges on that run. I read up on it afterwards and once I learned what the hell he was talking about I now make a point BEFORE any DFB run to ask in team chat, "Are we doing the badges on this run, or does everyone already have them." And then, if anyone says they need them, give a quick explanation how you get them, because it is very simple. You just need a few minutes to explain it. And do it while everyone is standing around waiting and not frantically smashing buttons in the middle of a fight

The part of this badge that requires taking out all of the AVs/EBs seems to be if not impossible then very tedious to do with a blaster. I was able to sail through it with my Ill/Rad controller because it is pretty much the soloing-est build out there, at least as much so as I have seen. But now that my blaster is in the upper 40s I wanted to do grab the accolade with him, but it is a complete pain in the bunghole. I don't see people spamming for groups to do this in the LFG channel, so I assume people solo it most of the time. If you have done this with a blaster please enlighten me. I was able to take out Infernus with the use of a couple of Bounce back inspirations, and only a minor amount of XP debt. But for Manticore I had to drop a Vanguard Heavy Power Core to soften him up because after my first hit he locks me up with holds and his range is as great or greater than my snipe. Are there strategies for taking these guys out with just a blaster? What I plan to try with the next one is to stock up on 15-20 purple insp. for each fight. Are there any other temp pets out there that are a bit cheaper than the Vanguard thing? I would prefer not to have to do a Rikti Mothership raids for every 2-3 fights.

I have a mind/emp. controller I made up mostly because I have a sentimental streak and he was one of the first guys I made back on live when the game first came out, even though I mostly solo and emp doesn't add all that much to levelling solo. And even now, groups don't really seem to have much need for buffs and heals at all. It is cool, though to have at least one character who is more group based. But I need to take a pool attack, since this guy is achingly slow to kill stuff even with containment (which was a new thing for me btw) because that's how long it had been since I played the game. I took Flurry, mainly because that was what I took back in the day, and again, I am somewhat sentimental guy. I had planned to take Arcane Bolt also, since it was the only ranged pool power attack (as far as I know) and it worked pretty well on my ill./rad. But the new "Project Will" power in the Force of Will pool seems to be a bit better, since it is mostly psychic damage (looks like 75% with containment). While Arcane bolt is all smashing with containment adding an equal amount of energy damage. Both seem to do about the same damage and have the same chance to knock down. Project Will seems to be the winner here but wanted to post a question and see if there was something I'm missing. Or, if there is another better power to take. Or, should I just wait and pick an Ancillary power attack, since those ALL look like they are better.

That could explain it then. I usually open with mass hyp. which sets up containment, then dom. and lift on the biggest thing I think I can take out before the sleep wears off. If there are only three mobs I will alternate mez. on the other two to resleep them until I can kill the one I am working on. I usually take a pool attack power to fill out the damage attack chain. Currently flurry, because I didn't know about arcane bolt when I took it, but will likely switch to that or the Force of Will ranged attack, maybe both. But that is all on a controller. My Dominator is stuck in the late teens early twenties because, like the OP, I just never *got* the character. Without containment he just did not seem to do as much damage as even a controller. It is fine with domination going that your holds last 50% longer but without containment it takes you TWICE as long to kills stuff. It seems like Domination should give you some kind of recharge bonus, a small one of like 10-15% maybe. Otherwise it's major benefit seems to be an acknowledgment that it is going to take you longer to kill stuff. I play mostly controllers, though, so there may be something I am missing.

Odd that bosses and AVs are so lacking in sleep resistance. I suppose all that evil planning and scheming kind'a tuckers em out and they find any offer of a nap hard to resist. Thanks for the clarification, though. I knew Mesmerize would hold a boss without an "overpower" hit because I'd done it. But I could also have sworn I'd slept them with mass hyp. Maybe I got an overpower hit when/if that actually worked?

Not sure if anyone else here has mentioned it, but I am pretty sure that sleep powers can take hold on a boss in one shot. You don't need to stack it twice or get the extra mag. At least, that is my experience on my mind controller. It won't keep you from getting hit that first time but you can dominate, sleep, wait for dominate to recharge and then stack another dominate on. If you miss, you don't wake them and can usually get a second shot at dominate. Especially if you have two sleeps like mesmerize and mass hypnosis. (I think that is what they're called) A tactic I have found somewhat successful on my controller has been to drop mass hypnosis as soon as I see a boss. As long as you have a couple acc enhancements in it it will hit most of the time and that will give you the breathing room to do something else.

Has anyone put together a spreadsheet/website of all of the attack powers and their base statistics? Like damage, activation time, and recharge time? I know you can see some of that information for a given power you have taken on your enhancement screen. I was just wondering if anyone had compiled it anywhere.

I definitely support people pushing the boundaries of good taste and cultural norms. And think even racist and racial commentary are open to making jokes and artistic expression, or whatever you want to call it? But I think you are REALLY playing with fire here. It is fine if you want to do a one man show in your local theater or something. But in a publicly available game, where there are likely many children, some of whom are certain to be members of the racial groups you are play acting with as a racist, you will almost certainly run smack into some serious trouble. I am not telling you not to do it, and I am not saying you don't have the right to do it (that is up to the admins) What I AM saying is that you will almost certainly get banned for doing what you describe. In spite of all the pains you describe planning to take to guard against offense it WILL NOT WORK. All it will take is one eight year old telling their mommy, "this man said the word <insert racial slur here> to me, a lot!" and you will get banned. It might even make the news. In a bad way. Like I said, I don't mind if you try this. It is no skin of my nose. But I will be SUPREMELY surprised if you pull it off for more than a couple game sessions.

If you have a confuse power then EBs should not be any problem, as long as you have enough patience. Would not work in T-o-T, since you get aggroed by the mobs immediately. But in missions, whenever I run across a boss or elite boss they almost always have at least one min. or Lt. nearby. I just confuse them, they attack their boss, when he is half health (or less depending on the character) I then finish him off. With the help of my new friend to boot. As long as they don't have the purple triangles thing going on your can also just confuse THEM while outside aggro range, until you stack up enough to make them you buddy, then THEY kill all their old buddies and will stand there quietly as you mess them up. Of course, you need to make sure you renew it enough. Or stack up some other mez. Helps to have a stealth power of some sort too, since running into one unannounced is a quick trip to the hospital.

As other people have said my alternate costume slot is mainly to accommodate cramped instance maps. In my case, though, I usually have one slot with a micro version of my guy that is as small as he could be made. I usually don't change the appearance otherwise. Might be fun to have a slot with a helmet on/off thing for those with helmets. I'm not enough of an RPer to be interested in "casual wear". If there were some sort of game effect to it, like your aggro distance was smaller if you were "blending in with the civilian population" I'd probably go through the time to make up something for that. There are a lot of costume possibilities that this game just never touches. Maybe if the interface were more user friendly I'd do more with it, but it takes so, so much more time to pick out and assemble all the pieces than I am willing to spend.

What, no Suplex? Not REAL wrestling unless they do a suplex. And the Pumped Up thing should include an emote where you tear off your shirt.

I'd rather eye poke the MF who INVENTED Carnies and Malta.

If I recall correctly new characters on Homecoming start with all costume pieces unlocked as well as all slots open. If that is the case, is the Trick-or-treat stuff and the Holiday event just a matter of collecting badges and doing the new house of horrors mission? Well, THAT and you can get the occasional rock you can throw at someone? Which is not inconsequential.

I like this idea, but maybe more along the line of the Brute "rage bar". So that when you first turn it on you get a normal +resist but as you stand put you can "draw on the power of the earth" and your bar fills up giving you +resist, +damage (instead of -damage, which is stupid anyway), knockback protection but also -fly, -run, and maybe even -recharge. The effects increase in purportion to the bar, like the Brute damage, until you are effectively immobile but almost invulnerable as well.

I could kind of see the no run, no jump, no fly thing as being thematic. Even the -recharge, kinda. You are a big chunk of stone. Although, if you have magic that allows people to fly and shoot laser beams from their eyes, I'm not sure why a rock is only allowed to do one of those things and not the other. And the -damage, as you say, makes no sense and is just garbage. It is not fitting with the theme, unless you are turning into a granite colored pillow or something. Although, a pillow tank would kind of rock, if you pardon the pun.

Not sure if this has been asked anywhere else in the thread, but this. What is the difference between Origin power pools and regular ones? Do people gain a benefit for taking a power pool that matches their origin? A penalty? Or, is the only difference between it and anything else the limitation to one?

I don't know why anyone in a group would ever NEED to go to the hospital, short of a total party wipe. With the Physician Accolade that gives ANY character can get a rez power. Even for a wipe as long as ONE person outside of aggro range has an awaken you can have the party back up in less time than it takes most people to run back to the mission. But you kids today with your RAP MUSIC and your TWERKING. You don't know how easy you have it. BACK IN MY DAY, we had to EARN XP. Get off my lawn!

I think all the pool powers should be changed to feed off of one another and give a greater bonus to each the more other powers you have from the same pool. Similar to how Boxing, Kick and Cross Punch buff one another. Therefore, I will suggest altering Hasten so that it gives a +30% recharge buff on its own +10% for each other power in the speed pool you take So, to get the same +70% bonus you get now all you need to do is take Flurry, Whirlwind, Burnout and Super Speed, the way same way most optimized builds do today.

I remember when we had games we carved out of ROCKS! And if you dropped it on someone head it could kill a man. And we were damn glad to have them too. Especially when we wanted to kill a man.